


Silver Alloys

by JCMorrigan



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Also no smut, Brotherhood of Mutants, M/M, Post-Canon, Villains Learning the Power of Friendship, Wanda gets a brief shiptease that's a mythology gag but it doesn't go anywhere, angsty conversations had among characters who generally don't angst, nothing bad by way of violence though, rated T because that's kind of the sphere I operate in and I want my bases covered, rather fast burn of shipping, some callbacks to comics stuff but this is an Evo fic first and foremost, that's my favorite trope now, though there will be moments meant for you to think of steamy things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-05 07:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15858642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCMorrigan/pseuds/JCMorrigan
Summary: Magneto has abandoned Wanda and Pietro Maximoff again, leaving them to return to the Brotherhood of Bayville Boarding House. Seeing Pietro's return stirs up old resentment in Lance Alvers, and the two have to weather the storm before they can become closer. As Wanda readjusts to life with roommates, Fred Dukes comes to a realization about his bond with Todd Tolansky and perhaps doesn't pursue it in the most rational way. In the end, the five have only each other to rely on, but that's not so bad, is it?





	1. No Home

Pietro and Wanda Maximoff had a bad feeling about their father’s new alliance from the moment he had struck it. The fact that the person had requested to have Magneto withhold their name from his children was already begging suspicion. But Magneto would not be moved. This person shared Magneto’s devotion to his cause, and despite everything, Magneto was not yet ready to give up on it.

Pietro and Wanda had followed him across the country on his crusade, sticking close. It was not that long ago that they had been well and truly reunited with him following the confrontation with Apocalypse and his freedom from being the tyrant’s Horseman. Magneto had expressed a desire to reconnect with his family, and so had taken Pietro and Wanda away from the Brotherhood of Mutants to be able to spend the time with them that he had so far lost.

      So far, while it hadn’t been a perfect reunion – what did you say to children you hadn’t had a real conversation with in years, to the daughter you abandoned and the son you had only ever talked business with? – there were signs of a bond growing between the three. It had seemed almost like the sort of road trip a normal family went on. Magneto drove them past the signs that marked the borders between the states, stopping to treat them to lunch at diners where Pietro refused to stop sneaking fries off his sister’s plate, pulling over briefly to appreciate mountainsides or valleys that drew Wanda’s interest enough for her to stare out at them, making them the subject of some flight of fantasy and refusing to say anything about it.

      Why, then, were the twins still both very uneasy about the meeting Magneto had just secured?

      It took place in a warehouse that looked like it hadn’t seen a living being in it for a decade: just rusted car parts. The mysterious ally waited there: a slim man dressed primly in a suit featuring a blue jacket and a violet waistcoat. Magneto had come in full dress, bearing his helmet and cape. Pietro and Wanda were similarly suited up for the occasion.

      “Shaw,” Magneto greeted, figuring it was now safe to reveal his name.

      “You said you would be bringing two allies,” Sebastian Shaw criticized. “Not two children.”

      “You will find they are hardly children,” Magneto argued. “Wanda. Give our friend a demonstration of why he should not underestimate us.”

      Wanda obliged, summoning the energy to levitate the car parts, spinning them around the warehouse in a vortex. When Magneto held up a hand, she let them all crash down metallically.

      “I see,” Shaw said. “This is the Scarlet Witch. In that case, she is not a child. She is a liability.”

      “She has complete control over her powers,” Magneto assured.

      “I severely doubt that,” Shaw stated. “And the boy seems to be nothing special to speak of.”

      “Hey!” Pietro snapped, offended.

      “I will not entertain this foolishness,” Shaw said plainly. “If you wish to solidify our alliance, you must come alone. Without your two…liabilities.”

      “Hey, buckle-shoes,” Pietro barked, “if you get our dad, you get us. We’re a package deal.”

      “They are YOUR children,” Shaw told Magneto, ignoring Pietro outright. “I now see the source of your bias.”

      “We won’t be split up again,” Wanda insisted.

      “Very well, then,” Shaw said, turning to leave the room. “Consider our alliance disbanded. The plan will move on without you.”

      “Wait!” Magneto stretched out a hand after Shaw.

      “Oh?” Shaw paused. “Have we changed our mind?”

      “Father, no,” Wanda hissed. “We’ll find another way.”

      “I…” Magneto sputtered. “I must…I must keep fighting.”

      “Wait a minute!” Pietro realized. “You’re gonna kick us back out! After all we just went through!”

      “I am sorry.” Magneto turned to face his son and daughter. “I regret that it has to be this way. We will…we will find each other again.”

      “NO!” Wanda screamed; the car parts rattled, threatening to fly once more. “You can’t abandon us! We’re a family now! You promised we would be a family!”

      “And we will be,” Magneto tried to assure her. “But right now, I must follow the path – “

      “Oh, save it.” Pietro was already headed for the opposite door. “I can see where this is going. Come on, Wanda. We don’t need to put up with this again.”

      “But…” Wanda looked to her father, tears welling in her eyes. “You can’t. Not now. Not to me.” Her hands shook as she extended them.

      Magneto clasped her hands in his own. “I must.”

      Wanda ripped her hands away from Magneto; the car parts rose into the air, crackling with energy, and then, unbidden, flew at Magneto, a raw manifestation of the betrayal Wanda felt. She was horrified, for a moment, that her temporary loss of control was the death of Magneto. But his control over metal was strong; he held back the barrage of debris, keeping it a safe distance from him.  

      “And you said she had control,” Shaw quipped.

      “You,” Wanda growled. “This is because of YOU!”

      “Wanda!” Magneto commanded. “No more!”

      After heaving three deep breaths, Wanda agreed. “You’re right,” she told him. “No more.”

      She walked out, keeping her pace slow, maintaining her composure. It wasn’t until she exited the door and her feet hit the sidewalk outside that she allowed tears to fall.

      Pietro watched her, staying still as she strode forth. It was times like these he hated. It always seemed there was something he was obligated to do, but he could never quite pin down what it was. Never had an attempt from him to offer Wanda any comfort actually worked, and besides, he had his own turmoil to focus on. So he remained as a statue until Wanda barked his name: “Pietro.”

      He sped to her side when summoned. “Can you believe this?” he groaned. “Just when you think the old man learned!”

      “I thought he had changed,” Wanda said solemnly.

      The sound of a car engine alerted the twins to the fact that Magneto and his new ally were speeding away from the warehouse in the opposite direction from their trajectory in a sleek black vehicle that obviously belonged to Shaw.

      “He’s really gone,” Pietro growled. “That lowlife.”

      “Pietro,” Wanda said as she began to tremble, “what happens to us now?”

      “Well, he did leave us the car,” Pietro mused. “No, wait, he has the keys. I’d hot-wire it…but I never actually learned how to do that. Lance knows. I should’ve made him teach me. Looks like we’re walking until we can find a bus. We gotta have enough at this point to make fare back to New York.”

      “Then where do we go?” Wanda asked.

      Pietro shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious?”

 

* * *

 

      The bus ride was long and uncomfortable in many senses. For one, the seats were practically rock-hard. For another, without Magneto to give the semblance of fatherly care, the twins found very little to talk about. A normal family road trip had crashed and burned, and there seemed little point in pretending things were all right.

      It wasn’t for the lack of trying, though. Mostly on Pietro’s part.

      “I know you hate hearing this,” he began.

      “Don’t tell me again,” Wanda warned.

      “But this really isn’t out of character,” Pietro went on. “You just don’t remember it. Come on, isn’t there some part of you that remembers what it was really like before Mastermind made you all sentimental for Dad? It’s gotta be in there somewhere. You know, all those years he locked you away in the – “  
      “I said DON’T TELL ME!” Wanda screamed.

      The bus swerved. There was no telling if it had been driver error or an act of Wanda. The conversation was dropped.

      It resumed again an hour later: “You think they’ll be happy to see us?” Courtesy of Pietro. “They better be happy to see me. I mean, I’m pretty much the boss. Dunno how they actually get along without me.”

      “No one will care that I’m back,” Wanda muttered. “They never did.”

      “Of course they did!” Pietro insisted. “I can think of one person who will be VERY happy to – “

      Wanda shot him a look that told Pietro he had better not touch that subject either. They entered their mutual pact of silence.

      Then, Pietro again: “This really bites. I didn’t even WANT to come back. I mean, when we were out in the first place, I was all thinking about how much they must be struggling without me, but I didn’t actually want this.”

      “Me either,” Wanda agreed, and it was the first time for the whole ride that the twins seemed to be on the same page. Pietro took that as cause to be self-congratulatory.

      At long last, the bus pulled up to the proper stop. Pietro sped off the vehicle before anyone else could get up; Wanda waited for her proper turn in line before rising from her seat and making her way to the door. Her red shoes hit the sidewalk next to where Pietro awaited her.

      “Nice timing, slowpoke,” he jeered.

      Wanda didn’t respond. That was an utter revocation of the sibling brownie points he’d accumulated earlier, Pietro realized.

      They walked together in silence down the concrete until a familiar sight neared. The house, as usual, looked to be in much better repair on the outside than the twins knew it would be on the inside. Laying eyes again on the sign that gave the house its name was nothing short of bittersweet as they read the words:

      “Brotherhood of Bayville Boarding House.”

 

* * *

 

      The living room was empty. Filthy and littered with trash, but empty. The perfect ground for Lance Alvers.

      He dragged the black amplifier to the center of the room, grinning as he plugged it in to the wall outlet. His guitar was slung over his shoulder. In one hand, he held the cord that eventually connected the instrument to its corresponding amp. The cord was good and long, which was ideal for how much Lance was to be moving.

      Lance gave the guitar an experimental strum. The chord reverberated through the living room and over the lower floor of the house, immediately and effectively widening Lance’s smile. It just kept getting better.

      He knew he had precious little time before he was to be interrupted, so he dove right in from there, fingers dancing over the strings of the guitar to piece the notes together into a riff of beauty and intensity. As he crafted his hard-rock sonatina, his feet moved almost of their own volition, taking Lance into a very simple dance to the beat he set himself. He fell to his knees, absolute bliss coursing through his body as he let loose the notes that had been cooped up inside of him, allowing the air to take hold of the wilder side of his soul.

      But like all good things, it was too good to last.

      It started with a yell of “WILL YOU QUIET DOWN?” overlaid with one of “I’M TRYING TO SLEEP HERE!”. Lance got back to his feet, his fingers never leaving the strings, as he played on. The composition was far from over, and maybe, if he ignored his housemates, he could get away with expressing more of it. Annoying them was a fun little bonus, too. Maybe this time, Lance would actually sing along. That would really get their goats. Not to mention give Lance an outlet he hardly ever utilized; he was a strangely shy singer, though he was fairly certain he had talent in that department.

      He never got the chance. A thick glob of green mucus slapped onto his right hand, driving out a sour chord.

      “Aw, c’mon – “ Lance groaned as his two housemates stormed into the living room.

      The tall, broad, and solid Fred Dukes pointed directly at Lance and yelled “GET HIM!”

      Lance saw it coming, but didn’t have time to run before the shorter, wirier Todd Tolansky pounced on him, tackling him and squatting on his chest. The guitar was miraculously unharmed, but when Fred wrenched it from Lance’s grip, Lance began to worry that would soon no longer be the case.

      “Oh, come on, guys!” Lance protested, shoving Todd aside (and drawing a shriek from him). “Not my guitar!”

      “If you’re not gonna be considerate,” Fred insisted, “then we’re gonna revoke your guitar privileges!”

      “Do NOT break that,” Lance warned, now on his feet and pointing at Fred threateningly. If the guitar came to a premature end, Lance wanted it quite clear, the house would find itself quite shaken.

      “Break it?” Fred repeated. “Nah, I’m gonna keep it.”

      “Why are you going to KEEP it?” Lance groaned. “You can’t even play it!”

      “Yeah, but if I have it, neither can you,” Fred said with a smirk.

      “Hey, Freddie!” Todd encouraged, now squatting on the floor. “That thing’d make a good towel rack!”

      “It would, wouldn’t it?” Fred taunted.

      “DO NOT PUT YOUR WET TOWELS ON MY GUITAR,” Lance growled. “You have until the count of three to give it back. One!”

      “Whatcha gonna do?” Todd teased. “A 1.9-magnitude micro earthquake?”

      Lance was momentarily turned to pure confusion, his facial expression asking Todd where he even knew that terminology.

      “Richter scale was the last thing we learned before gettin’ expelled,” Todd explained with a shrug.

      Lance returned his attention to Fred. “TWO.”

      “Just try it,” Fred said with a wicked smile.

      “THREE!” Lance cried.

      His hands spread out at his sides, and his eyes rolled upward as he concentrated on activating his power. A light earthquake rumbled beneath the house’s foundations. The couch and an armchair jostled threateningly toward Fred.

      That was the exact moment Pietro threw open the door and cried, “GUESS WHO’S BACK!”

      The quake ceased immediately. The guitar dropped to the floor out of a grip loosened by shock; it was still unbroken. Three pairs of eyes regarded Pietro with utter shock.

      “I knew you missed me,” Pietro said as he sauntered into the living room, flopping down on the recently shifted couch and crossing his ankles over one arm.

      Wanda slipped in quietly, watching the scene unfold from the foyer as she softly closed the door behind her.

      “Pietro?” Lance said in a stunned tone.

      “That IS my name,” Pietro confirmed.

      “PIETRO!” Fred swept the white-blonde boy off the couch, nearly crushing his delicate frame in a one-armed hug. “You came back!”

      “Yeah, we thought you was gone forever!” Todd asserted.

      “Let me go, will ya?” Pietro struggled out of Fred’s grip, taking a place standing in the middle of the living room. “That’s right. The one and only is back.”

      “Tell me the one and only didn’t come alone,” Todd urged.

      Wanda had completely missed any chance to slip upstairs before she was spotted. “SWEETUMS!” Todd greeted as he hopped across the floor toward her, getting to his feet and extending his arms to embrace her. “I always knew you’d come back to me! After all, the heart – “

      He was thrown backward by a harsh burst of energy. “Because I was looking forward to having THAT back in my life,” Wanda said sarcastically.

      “Wanda!” Fred cried, turning to behold her. “Welcome back!”

      Lance knew, logically, that he should be joining the welcome band for the twins. Especially Pietro, who had been part of the Brotherhood since its very inception. As he regarded them, however, it was anger, not relief or joy, that surged through him. And it got stronger when he looked at Pietro as opposed to Wanda. He stayed put, folding his arms and giving a stony glare outward for anyone who dared behold it.

      “Things weren’t the same without you two,” Fred insisted.

      “Of course they weren’t,” Pietro affirmed. “I’m surprised you three didn’t burn the house down. Or blow it up. Or shake it to pieces.”

      Lance knew that last was directed at him, and he made no response. If Pietro was trying to bait him into reacting, it wouldn’t work.

      “So, uh…” Todd brought up, “weren’t you two off on some mission with your dad?”

      “Yeah, that didn’t pan out,” Pietro said casually, “so we decided to crash back here.”

      “That’s one way of putting it,” Wanda huffed.

      “Well, what happened?” Fred asked.

      “He abandoned us again,” Wanda explained. “It came down to us or his mission. And he made his choice.”

      “It’s not like we needed him,” Pietro insisted, his tone giving off the impression that he was more confident than he actually was. “You guys better not have trashed our rooms.” He gave Lance a direct look.

      So he was attempting to engage, Lance thought. He remained firm in his stony glare.

      “Think of it less as ‘trashed,’” Todd responded, “and more as ‘archived and appreciated.’”

      “I don’t even want to know what you’re implying by that,” Wanda growled.

      “Pizza for dinner as usual?” Pietro asked, still looking right at Lance. He’d already gotten assurance that the other two were glad to see him and Wanda return. For the sake of completion, he thought, his ego needed Lance to at least acknowledge his existence.

      “We hadn’t even planned that far,” Fred admitted.

      “When do we ever?” Todd commented.

      “Um…” Pietro was done waiting for Lance to make a move. “Hello?” He waved a hand rapidly in front of Lance’s face. “You awake in there? Your team leader just came back home to whip you guys back into shape. I thought you’d be happier.”

      “Are you SERIOUS?” Lance burst out. “You think we’re just going to take you back like that? After you quit the Brotherhood?”

      “I thought we were,” Fred said in confusion.

      “Yeah, why wouldn’t we?” Todd added.

      “You’re just a traitor who thinks he can come and go whenever he wants!” Lance ranted. “You up and leave us, and then you just march right back in here and expect us to act like you were never gone?”

      “I wasn’t expecting you to act like I was never gone,” Pietro corrected. “I was expecting a warm welcome BECAUSE I was gone.”

      “I knew this was a bad idea,” Wanda said as she turned to place her hand on the doorknob.

      Lance then realized his mistake. “NO!” He rushed to Wanda, putting his own hand over hers. “Not you, Wanda. I don’t mean…I didn’t mean…I’m not mad at you.”

      “I’m surprised you care,” Wanda huffed, though she left her hand still.

      “I just…” Lance searched for the right words. He hadn’t meant his outburst to be directed at Wanda at all. He knew she suffered, and especially after another betrayal by Magneto, she would need comfort and stability. “I know it had to hurt. If you need a place to go, we’re here for you. You know that, right?”

      “That’s not what you said just now,” Wanda reminded him.

      “I wasn’t saying it to you,” Lance told her softly. “It’s different with you. I know how it must feel to – “

      “HOW CAN YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS?” Wanda rounded on him, breaking her hand free.

      “Okay, okay…” Lance backed off. “Maybe I don’t. But I can tell you’re hurt. Please stay, Wanda. I want you to have a place.”

      So someone did care about her after all, and beyond Todd’s superficial lust. Wanda lowered her head, closing her eyes.

      “The only traitor here,” Lance asserted, turning back around to face his victim, “is Pietro.”

      “What did I do that she didn’t?” Pietro asked in shock.

      “Like this isn’t the pattern,” Lance reminded him. “You get in good graces with your dad, you up and leave without so much as saying goodbye, then you come home and act like you’re king of the world. I understand her. But I also understand you. She left because she loves her dad! YOU keep leaving because you think we’re DISPOSABLE!”

      “Are you saying I don’t love my dad?” Pietro replied, offended to the core. “Are you for real right now? What is your PROBLEM?”

      “Lance,” Wanda said cautioningly, “leave him alone.”

      “I’m just sick of going back and forth between being Pietro’s servant and being left behind!” Lance insisted.

      “Well, if that’s the way you feel, then fine.” Pietro stormed toward the door, keeping his speed at normal for dramatic effect. “Maybe I’ll just go somewhere else. After all, I couldn’t possibly be hurting the way Wanda is, could I?”

      “Now, hang on, hang on,” Todd tried to interrupt. “This is gettin’ blown outta proportion – “

      “You wanna know the truth, ALVERS?” Pietro growled, now standing directly before Lance, looking up into Lance’s eyes with all the frustration in the world that Lance was slightly taller. “Wanda and I didn’t even really wanna come back. We WANTED to be with our dad. This is the only place left where we even belong, and that’s it.”

      “Pietro,” Fred attempted, “calm down – “

      “No!” Pietro growled. “If you have a problem with me, then I’m outta here!”

      “Lance is the one with the problem!” Todd insisted.

      “Yeah,” Lance agreed stonily. “I am.”

      “Forget all of you,” Pietro huffed. “I don’t need any of you. I don’t WANT any of you. I just wanted…” He shook his head. “FORGET WHAT I WANT!”

      He pushed past Lance and Wanda, then, too fast to be perceived, he was out the door and speeding down the street, far too quickly to catch.

      “Lance,” Fred asked, “what’d you do that for?”

      “Was I really the only one thinking it?” Lance snarled. “He only comes crawling back to us when he wants something out of us! I’m just…sick of him treating us like tools!”

      “I did the same thing,” Wanda reminded Lance.

      “No,” Lance told her, his tone softening. “It’s really different with you. You’ve never been as fake with us as he always is.”

      “Where’s this even COMING from?” Todd asked, bewildered.

      Where had it come from? Lance wondered. When Pietro had left, he had simply swept out all thoughts of the speedster. Sure, every now and again, the memory of Pietro would breeze through his head, as fast as Pietro’s physical powers made him in real life, but Lance refused to let it stay long. He’d never let it linger enough to track how it made him feel. Confronting Pietro face-to-face had unleashed a lot of emotions Lance had dammed up, apparently dating back to months ago. He hadn’t even realized how long he’d been carrying the grudge.

      All he knew now was that thinking about Pietro made him completely irate. He didn’t want to be seen as disposable. If Pietro could constantly demand respect, why couldn’t Lance get the same out of him? And why should that even matter?

      “You’re right about him, you know,” Wanda sighed. “I feel the same way so many times. Even when he tries to reach me, it always comes right back to him and what he wants, what he needs. Traveling back here alone with him wasn’t easy. If I’m being honest…I’m glad I can just get a break.”

      “Yeah, but what if he never comes back?” Fred asked worriedly.

      “He’ll be back through that door before the sun sets,” Lance assured. “Bet on it.” He then looked Wanda directly in the eye. “So…I guess there are things you want to talk about.”

      “I already said all I want to talk about with you,” Wanda told him. “Right now, I just want to try and forget the last few weeks ever happened.” She began to ascend the stairs to locate her old room.

      “We’ll call you for dinner,” Lance told her.

      “You don’t have to,” Wanda replied. “I’ll take care of myself.”

      “We really don’t have much in the fridge,” Lance informed her.

      “I think there’s just a pack of cheese, a couple apples that haven’t gone bad yet, and a jar of peanut butter,” Fred counted off.

      “Why did you put the peanut butter in the fridge?” Lance asked, bewildered.

      “It tastes good cold!” Fred defended.

      “I caught a couple wasps I’d been savin’,” Todd contributed. “You can have ‘em!”

      “I’ll make do,” Wanda stated, her back to the boys. She made her way up the last of the stairs, then shut the door to her old room.

      It was practically preserved, museum-quality, with a thin layer of dust over everything. Wanda didn’t know what better she could ask for. The shelf was still laden with books she’d read about ten times each, but she had been careful in budgeting for her selection in order to stock up on the books that would tire her least, and she selected one then, ready to lose herself in a story she’d read so many times, it now seemed like a fairy tale everyone should know. She reclined on her bed with the book. Deciding to take care of dinner on her own terms with her housemates’ meager ingredients had been the best move, ultimately. Her stomach was too agitated by her anger and melancholy to hold a lot of food at the moment.

      Downstairs, Lance picked up his guitar from where it had been discarded, moving back to collect the amp and store it in his room. He was aware of the silent stares of both Fred and Todd judging him for his outburst. To respond, he simply reiterated, “Before the sun sets. I’ll put money on it.”

      But the sun set that night without any sign of Pietro on the horizon. Lance, Fred, and Todd split a pizza three ways before retiring to their rooms, and still Pietro hadn’t showed.

      When Lance lay down to sleep, it took him quite a while to get into a relaxed state. When he fell unconscious, Pietro sped through his dreams, and even in slumber, Lance was angered.


	2. Hit the Brakes

      The next day, there was no sign of Pietro either. There was barely any sign of Wanda; she kept to her room, only leaving to warm up the last slice of pizza from the night prior and eat it for lunch. Lance hadn’t observed her take any breakfast, which concerned him. But he wasn’t about to bother her about it. He knew what that would get him: a sharp word at best and thrown into a wall at worst.

      There were better things for Lance to focus on. For that night, he had a date scheduled with the one and only Kitty Pryde. He wasn’t sure if she yet thought of them as boyfriend and girlfriend, but he hoped so. The thought of the date made him quite glad indeed: the perfect distraction to take his mind off anything and everything Maximoff-related.

      Kitty had invited him to a restaurant that was not exactly upscale, but not down at the level of a fast-food joint, either. Going through his closet, Lance realized just how few formal clothes he owned. It wasn’t that he wanted to wear a suit; he hated suits. But the atmosphere of this date probably called for a suit. He would just have to settle for the next best thing: his cleanest black tee and a pair of khakis. As he slipped the shirt on so its hem fell over the pants, he took a gander at himself in the full-length mirror he had miraculously managed not to break yet. It wasn’t as formal as he supposed was respectable for this sort of night, but he liked the way he looked. Flexing one arm, he felt certain Kitty would approve as well.

      “Ooooh, fancy! Dressing up for Kitty-Kitty-Kitty?”

      That was when Lance realized he had left the door unlocked and cracked open. That was basically an invitation, and one that Fred had accepted. Sighing, Lance faced Fred, who was thankfully alone, and told him, “If you pick on me about this, I WILL shake your room until the shelves fall over.”

      “Tough talk to the guy who can just pick ‘em right back up!” Fred jeered.

      Right. That threat had been directed at entirely the wrong person. Lance sighed. “Can you just not? For ONCE?”

      “Yeah, yeah,” Fred said, surprisingly agreeably, which was prepping the floor for what was about to come next. “Hey, we’re friends.”

      “Yes, we are,” Lance confirmed.

      “Can I ask you something?”

      Lance shrugged, not entirely sure where this was going. “Sure. As long as it’s not picking on me.”

      Fred furtively slipped into the room and shut the door, confusing Lance even more. “So, uh, Lance…” he began. “How’d you know you were into Kitty?”

      “The same way anyone knows they’re into anyone?” Lance replied, now utterly perplexed. “Like you were into Jean.”

      “Yeah, I figured that part,” Fred replied. “But…” He was having trouble wording what was on his mind. It was a strange circumstance he had found himself in, and he didn’t yet know how to proceed. “What if it was like…you didn’t think you SHOULD date Kitty?”

      “I think I’m the only person I know who does think I should date Kitty,” Lance joked. “Am I seriously seeing Fred Dukes, the Blob, being unsure about asking out some girl?”

      “Well, it’s not just ANY…” Fred replied. “Actually, it’s not even a girl.”

      “Oh.” That was surprising, but Lance rolled with it. “Okay. Still doesn’t explain why you’re nervous.”

      “I am not NERVOUS!” Fred snapped defensively. “I just don’t know if it’s a good idea! It might ruin things! I just wanted to talk to somebody before I made up my mind, and you’re the only person I can talk to!”

      “Don’t you usually bother Toad about this kind of stuff?” Lance asked.

      “Well…” Fred’s gaze suddenly hit the floor as his fingers knotted together.

      It clicked. “Oh, no,” Lance said with a mischievous smirk. “Don’t tell me.”

      “I think it’s been like this for a while now,” Fred went on.

      “Oh,” Lance replied, “you are NOT allowed to give me trouble about Kitty Pryde now that I know you’re into TODD TOLANSKY.”

      “Shhhh!” Fred hushed hurriedly. “Be quiet! I don’t want him to hear, y’know?”

      “So what makes him so hot?” Lance asked smugly. “Is it the lack of personal hygiene or the lack of social skills?”

      “Well, remember when we all started hanging out as the Brotherhood at first,” Fred reminded him, “and I told you all I hated being laughed at, and Todd was the only one to say he got laughed at too?”

      “Todd,” Lance repeated. “You’re on a first-name basis already. Well, it must be true love. Hope you’re okay with getting married in a swamp and adopting a bunch of tadpoles.”

      “Hey, don’t talk about him like that!” Fred growled.

      “Blob,” Lance reminded him, “you have given me a full year’s worth of trouble over Kitty. I’m just paying back what you owe. But seriously, what do you SEE in him?”

      “Well, at first it was kind of a shallow thing,” Fred explained. “I was into his good looks and his pretty hair. But then we hung out more, and I love the way he smiles, and just the way he looks at life.”

      Lance took a moment for all of this to sink in. “Okay, I thought we were on the same page,” he said, “but then you said ‘good looks’ and ‘pretty hair’ and a bunch of other nice things, and I think we’re in some kind of misunderstanding, because I thought we were talking about Toad.”

      “I should’ve known you wouldn’t understand,” Fred grunted as he turned to open the door to let himself out. “Forget I said anything.”

      Lance felt a twinge of guilt then. “Hey, Fred.”

      “What NOW?”

      “If you REALLY want my advice,” Lance said sincerely, “I say just go for it. That’s how I went with Kitty, and look where we are now! I really don’t think it’s going to ruin anything. Just stop being so shy. It’s weird coming from you.”

      “Yeah, but what about Wanda?” Fred brought up. “He’s head over heels for her. He looks at her like you look at Kitty.”

      “I dunno,” Lance replied. “Maybe he’ll change his mind. Or maybe he won’t. Won’t know if you don’t try, right?” He then shook his head. “Also…don’t compare his thing for Wanda to me and Kitty. I am not that creepy.”

      Fred’s eyes suddenly shot open wide. “You’re not gonna TELL him, are you?”

      Now, this was interesting. If Lance were a less moral person, say, if he were the white-haired-runaway-who-shalt-not-be-named, he might take this as leverage. Threaten to put the wrong word in the wrong ear if Fred didn’t bow to his whims. But that wasn’t Lance. “No,” he promised, “I’m not gonna tell him. I have my own love life to worry about.”

      “Good luck on your date,” Fred said sincerely, figuring he owed Lance at least that much after Lance had heard him out on this awkward issue.

      “I won’t need luck.” Lance flashed another look at his mirror. Still handsome.

      Fred exited the room then, and Lance followed, picking up the car keys off his nightstand and twirling them around a finger. Lance progressed down the stairs, passing Todd flicking idly through television channels in the living room. He had to time this right, or else he would become the victim of teasing yet again –

      “Looking good, lover boy.”

      Lance breezed out the door before Todd could get any further with that comment.

      As he started the car, he realized he might have asked either Fred or Todd to keep track of if Wanda ate anything that night. But once again, that was Wanda’s business, and Lance doubted he could entrust either one of them with that sort of responsibility.

 

* * *

 

      Kitty and Lance were seated at their table, which was near the restaurant’s street-facing window. Had Lance possessed foresight, he might have asked to be seated where passerby on the street wouldn’t be able to view them, lest the wrong person turn up and see. But it didn’t occur to him that such a thing was able to happen. That was his mistake.

      Kitty had arrived wearing a bright pink sundress. “You look really nice,” Lance said as he took his seat.

      “Thanks,” Kitty replied, pulling out her chair –

      Chair. Lance mentally kicked himself. He should have pulled out her chair first.

      Kitty didn’t seem to mind. “You look nice too,” she complimented, flashing Lance a sincere smile.

      It was then that it might have been in Lance’s best interest to look out the window and not at Kitty’s bright white teeth. However, he did not, and by the time he even thought to give the world outside a glance, the wrong person had already seen him in place and put together a plan.

      The waiter arrived promptly, taking down Kitty and Lance’s orders and taking them to the kitchen. Kitty and Lance were then left alone, with only each other to focus on.

      “So,” Kitty said, not following it up with anything more.

      “So,” Lance replied.

      A silence hung between them. That was enough cause for Lance to panic. What should he talk about? The X-Men? No, he didn’t like them enough to have good things to say about Kitty’s team. The Brotherhood? No, this date was his way of getting his mind off what was happening at home. Apocalypse? No. Definitely not.

      “What have you been up to?” Kitty finally asked.

      Definitely not weathering Maximoff-related drama. “Practicing guitar, mostly,” Lance answered.

      “I didn’t know you played!” Kitty said, astonished.

      “Yeah,” Lance replied. “I’ve never really had a shot at performing anywhere, but it’s fun.”

      “What kind of music do you play?” Kitty asked.

      “Pretty hard rock,” Lance answered. “You into that?”

      “Well…” Kitty shifted in her seat, a little embarrassed. “Not really. But I’m sure what you play sounds amazing!”

      “I’d love to play for you sometime,” Lance stated, though he wasn’t sure how that was going to work, as he didn’t really want to cart his equipment all the way to the mansion where the X-Men resided, and he had even less desire to invite Kitty back to the Brotherhood house.

      That was when the intruder intercepted the waiter who was charged with the couple’s orders, whipping the tray out of his hands with a quick “Thank you!” and breezing across the restaurant.

      “So, uh…” Lance decided to turn the question around. “What about you? What have…you been up to?”

      “Mostly running drills – “ Kitty began.

      Before Lance could process what was going on, someone who was most certainly not their waiter sped up to the table. “I hope you young lovebirds are having a wonderful night!” he quipped. “Now, what did we order? Two sodas?” One glass was plopped down roughly in front of Lance. The other was set down before Kitty and immediately spilled all over her.

      “UGH!” Kitty leapt up from her seat, shaking out her skirt to try and dry it off.

      No. It couldn’t be. It shouldn’t be. If it was who Lance thought it was, the night would end in murder. He slowly turned his head to observe the intruder, hoping desperately not to see what he knew he was about to see.

      It was Pietro. Of course.

      “Sorry about that!” Pietro jeered. “Let me make it up to you. Here.” He set the plates down on the table – swapping the orders completely. “You want ketchup on your fries, right?” Taking the ketchup bottle into hand, Pietro pointed it down at the plate, then, at the last minute, steered its nozzle and squeezed hard so the red condiment decorated Kitty’s already soaked dress. “Oops,” Pietro said mischievously.

      Lance stood immediately, reaching out to grab Pietro’s shirt collar, but in the time it took him to do so, Pietro was halfway across the restaurant. “HAVING A NICE TIME?” he called from the midpoint of the room.

      “PIETRO, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!” Lance yelled back.

      “THAT’S IF YOU CAN CATCH ME!” Pietro laughed. With that, he zoomed out of the restaurant, leaving many patrons thoroughly confused.

      Kitty was applying napkins to her dress liberally, grunting her disgust. “I thought he was out of town!” she complained.

      “I really wish he was,” Lance seethed. Why would Pietro bother interrupting his date, anyway? What did that even get him? Just amusement? That was probably it. This was, after all, Pietro he was dealing with. The waters didn’t run deep. Lance changed his tone to be more sympathetic: “I am so sorry. I didn’t know he was going to show up – “

      “I know,” Kitty replied. “It wasn’t your fault.” What she didn’t say: sometimes I wish you had better friends.

      All the same, Lance heard it loud and clear. “Hey,” he said, “if you want me to drive you back to the mansion so you can get cleaned up – “

      Kitty shook her head. “And let Pietro win? No way! We’re going to finish having a nice date, just you and me!”

      Lance gave her a relieved smile as they took their seats once more.

      “Anyway, you asked what I was up to?” Kitty recalled. “Mostly running training drills. Gotta keep my skills sharp. You never know what might happen!”

      She spoke. He laughed. He made witty banter. She smiled. They spent an hour and a half more together in that restaurant.

 

* * *

 

      In the dark of the night, Lance dropped Kitty off at the gate of the mansion, which opened to admit her. “See you around?” Kitty asked.

      Lance had been hoping she would stay in the car long enough to offer him a parting kiss. He supposed she didn’t want to move that fast. “Yeah,” he replied. “I’ll call you. Or you can call me.”

      “Goodnight!” Kitty called as she rushed up the path to the mansion, waving back to Lance.

      “Night!” Lance waved after her.

      The gate closed, and for a moment after that, Lance watched Kitty through it. She really was special. It did, sometimes, become more than apparent that the two were from different worlds, but that could be circumvented. After all, they had worked it out that night.

      “Heeeeere, Kitty-Kitty-Kitty…”

      Lance bristled. That voice was unmistakable. Of course he would have been able to keep up with the car. “If you know what’s good for you,” Lance said loudly, “you’ll get out of here and hope I decide to forget the stunt you pulled tonight.”

      There was a rushing breeze, and instantly, Pietro was sitting in the front passenger seat of the car where Kitty had been not too long ago. “Guess I don’t know what’s good for me,” he said slyly.

      “What are you even DOING?” Lance growled. “I thought you were staying away from me. Like I wanted.”

      Pietro leaned back, crossing his ankles as his feet rested on the dashboard. “I just wanted to talk to you without everyone else getting in the way.”

      “What can I say to get rid of you?” Lance groaned.

      “Well, for starters,” Pietro told him, “you can tell me why you’re mad at me.”

      “You seriously don’t get it?” Lance replied. “Hang on. I’m not having this conversation here.”

      He pulled the car into gear, taking a slow course into the city proper.

      “You’re not going back to the house, are you?” Pietro asked.

      “No,” Lance answered. “We’re just going to take a nice little drive until we come to an understanding. That being that you get why I don’t want anything to do with you, and then you leave me alone.” He had already planned to just keep driving until the conversation was through.

      “So spill it,” Pietro bade him. “What’s your deal with me?”

      “My deal is that you’re so selfish!” Lance growled. “Didn’t I spell this out? You can’t just treat me like trash, then expect me to welcome you back with open arms!”

      “I see,” Pietro recapitulated. “So when my sister comes back home, she’s a bird with broken wings who needs a comfortable nest. But when I do it, I’m a terrible person who doesn’t love my father. Now, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea; I’m a terrible person. But it hurt me just as bad as it hurt her. Why are you mad at me for leaving and not her?”

      “Because I’m not just mad at you for this time, okay?” Lance cried. “I’m mad because you’ve done this before!”

      “So REALLY,” Pietro realized, “you’re mad at me for when I left you guys after the Sentinel. Which I thought you got over already. That was a LONG time ago.”

      Lance sighed. “This time just…reminded me of that time,” he admitted. “You wouldn’t get this, but…things got so weird when you left. I was – we were all used to you being there, getting on our nerves, and suddenly you weren’t anymore. We thought we could trust you, but you just wanted to side with your dad. And then you came back and lorded your dad over us.”

      “Are you starting to see the pattern yet?” Pietro asked.

      “What, your dad?” Lance replied. “Are you really going to blame everything you did on your dad?”

      “Let’s come back to that,” Pietro said as he stared idly up at the stars overhead. “What I’m hearing from you is that you got mad because you missed me.”

      “What – “ Lance’s grip tightened on the wheel. “That is NOT what I was getting at!”

      “Why else be so mad when I leave?” Pietro asked. “I think you really like having me around. You wanted me to leave so you wouldn’t have to lose me anymore.”

      The worst part was that Lance couldn’t even tell if Pietro was being smug or not. He sounded strangely sincere, which wasn’t like him at all. It had to be an act. “We’re supposed to be friends,” Lance reminded him. “Or at least…we WERE.”

      “And it wasn’t any different when you left us for the X-Men to be with Kitty,” Pietro replied.

      That caught Lance off guard. “That was different!”

      “How?” Pietro asked. “I left to be with someone I loved, and you left to be with someone you loved. You don’t think it was weird for me not to have you around to annoy? Betraying the Brotherhood is a thing we do.”

      “Well, stop it,” Lance urged.

      “I’ll stop leaving when you stop leaving,” Pietro told him.

      Lance hadn’t expected that. “The X-Men weren’t for me, anyway,” he admitted. “Too many rules.”

      “I figured.”

      The car rolled on in silence.

      Pietro, as usual, was the one to break it: “All this time, I just wanted a relationship with my dad. Is that so hard to understand?”

      “Yeah, it is,” Lance told him. “You’re not the sentimental type.”

      “I know,” Pietro replied. “And thank goodness for that. But this time, I just…I thought we had something. It never works out, you know? Not my dad and not my sister.”

      “You don’t even try with Wanda,” Lance snapped. “She told me you just think about yourself and never about her.”

      “Well, I don’t know what to say to her!” Pietro replied, equally harshly. “I know I should be doing something to make her feel better, but what can I do? Nothing works! Nothing fixes it! And then it becomes between her and him. I gotta pick one. So I pick whoever I think I can actually have a relationship with. But I guess the right answer is neither, right?”

      Now Pietro was sounding incredibly sincere, and Lance didn’t know how to react. Could this really be an act? Was this a grand manipulation scheme? “You don’t try as hard with her as you think,” Lance reminded him. “You used her feelings about your dad to manipulate her into controlling the X-Men, remember?”

      “Like I said,” Pietro reiterated, “I’m a terrible person. Maybe that was a little messed up. I’d already tried to get her to join the scheme on her own, and she was too torn up about causing the subway crash. So I had to pull some strings to get her in on it. I really did think it would be good for her. But you’re right. I mostly thought it would be good for me.”

      “So what are you trying to say?” Lance asked.

      “What I’m trying to say is that I just want a family,” Pietro confessed. “But that’s not in the cards, is it?”

      “You just want a family,” Lance repeated.

      “My dad was supposed to be that for me,” Pietro grunted.

      Lance kept his eyes on the road; here’s where he otherwise would have shaken his head in disbelief. “You idiot,” he growled, “you already had a family! You had the Brotherhood!”

      “We’re not a family!” Pietro snapped. “We’re just a bunch of jerks who live in the same house and put up with each other!”

      “Pietro,” Lance shot back, “what do you think a family IS? Look, I’m no authority, but from what I’ve heard, real families aren’t just love and happiness all the time. Real families can’t stand each other. They’re stuck together under the same roof, and they figure out how to get along. Real families are a mess. I can’t think of any way we could be any more of a family in that way.”

      That prompted a long silence from Pietro. “Never thought of it like that,” he said quietly.

      “And…” Lance heaved a sigh. “Families…forgive each other when they mess up.”

      “I am NOT forgiving my father,” Pietro snapped.

      “Well, not when they mess up like THAT!” Lance corrected. “I wasn’t talking about you and him! I was talking about you and me. I shouldn’t have blown up at you. If…if you wanna come back home, then you should.”

      “Maybe I don’t want to,” Pietro grumbled.

      It was like trying to put a tiny sticky plaster on the stump of a severed limb, and Lance knew it. “Then do what you want, I guess. Where are you even sleeping?”

      “I found a place,” Pietro said vaguely.

      “An indoor place?” Lance asked.

      “Listen, I don’t need to tell you everything,” Pietro insisted.

      So that was a no. He was sleeping somewhere on the street or in the park. That put a twist in Lance’s gut. “So what happens now?” he asked.

      “I dunno,” Pietro answered. If he were to be honest with himself, while he still didn’t want to cross the boarding house threshold yet – partly out of sourness toward Lance that lingered, partly out of the feelings he was sorting out about Magneto – he didn’t want to leave the passenger seat of that car. He wasn’t ready to strike back out on his own, and Lance’s presence was comforting, much as he was loath to admit it. “How are things back at the house? I can only imagine it’s falling apart without me to take the lead.”

      “Oh, YOU take the lead?” Lance teased. “Pietro, I am the only thing standing between the Brotherhood and total chaos.”

      “But I’m better than you at literally everything, and you know it,” Pietro replied, equally teasingly.

      “Not EVERYTHING,” Lance argued.

      “Name three things you’re better at than me,” Pietro challenged.

      “You can’t cause earthquakes,” Lance said immediately.

      Pietro sniffed. “Okay. Point one.”

      “You can’t play the guitar,” Lance reminded him.

      “Point two.”

      “And you can’t – “ No. Lance was blanking. There was no way he was going to let Pietro win this contest of egos.

      It surprised him when the answer came from the seat behind him: “Hotwire a car.”

      “What?” Lance replied.

      “I can’t hotwire a car,” Pietro admitted. “When Dad took off, I wanted to hotwire his car to take me and Wanda back here. But then I remembered you’re the only one who knows how to do that.”

      “It isn’t hard,” Lance told him. “I could pick up any car off the street if I wanted. Well, okay, any car made up to the nineties. But that’s a lot of cars. I could show you how if you wanted.”

      “And give up your advantage on me?” Pietro teased.

      “I’m pretty sure I paint better than you do,” Lance replied, though that was grasping at straws; he had never seen Pietro work a can of spray paint before. “That’s four things. I can drop one.”

      He made a sharp turn, a new destination in mind.

      “So where are we going?” Pietro asked.

      “To the district where people don’t realize how good they have it,” Lance told him.

            By that, he meant an upscale district where expensive models were parked on the sidewalk. Lance did take a certain sort of glee at sticking it to the people he assumed would look down their noses at him, having no idea what he’d been through. It was altogether too bad he didn’t know where Kelly lived; that would have been a conquest for the ages. He settled for one of the models parked outside the miniature mansions, one that he could tell was of an old enough make to be easily hacked.

            The Jeep was parked around a corner, out of sight. As Lance and Pietro approached the target, Lance was suddenly struck by the flaw in the plan. “Okay, I just realized this isn’t gonna work.”

            “Why not?” Pietro asked.

            “Because I need tools for this,” Lance informed him.

            “You got ‘em at home?” Pietro asked.

            “Yes,” Lance answered, “for all the good that does us.”

            “Where?”

            “In my room,” Lance replied, “in a black case under my bed. But that’s still not gonna – “

            Pietro had already taken off, barely visible as he zipped down the street. Lance awaited him for a good while, knowing exactly what he’d done and hoping he would be back before anyone could come outside and see Lance loitering. The key to this operation would be brevity. That and the cover of night.

            Pietro returned, the familiar black case in hand. “How did they react to you showing up?” Lance asked, bewildered.

            “They never even knew I was there,” Pietro bragged.

            Lance could believe that. He took ahold of the case. “So,” he explained, “first thing we do is break the lock.”

 

* * *

 

            After Pietro successfully hotwired his first car, much to Lance’s pride, the pair found themselves cruising down the road in their stolen ride. Though Pietro had done the work to get the motor running, Lance had somehow found himself in the driver’s seat again, with Pietro relaxing in the passenger seat behind him.

            Driving a car that was not his own and that he had definitely not paid for sent a rush of exhilaration through Lance’s veins. Because of that, he drove a little bit faster than he should have, kissing the speed limit goodbye and tossing it to the wind.

            “Where do you wanna go?” he asked Pietro excitedly. “Because I can take you ANYWHERE.”

            “I’ve got nowhere to be,” Pietro remarked offhandedly, rolling down the window to feel the wind. “Let’s just make a run around town and come back.”

            Lance nodded his affirmation. “You did good for your first hot-wire, by the way.”

            “Of course I did,” Pietro replied with a smirk.

            Lance rolled down his own window. “I feel so alive right now,” he laughed. “Hence being a speed demon.”

            “You call THIS fast?” Pietro mocked. “I can slow-jog faster than this car is going.”

            “Well, then,” Lance warned, turning onto an empty street and lowering the gas pedal ever so slightly, “hang on.”

            As the car careened through town, Lance urged Pietro, “Hey, find us some tunes!”

            Pietro gladly obliged, flipping on the radio and spinning the dial to find a station he approved of. A strong drum beat and powerful vocals thrummed forth, echoing out the windows and getting lost in the night air.

            “Aw, come on,” Lance groaned, “not eighties trash!”

            “Get with the program, Alvers,” Pietro replied. “This is SEVENTIES trash.”

            Lance didn’t fight over the oldies, letting Pietro have his heyday. He just focused on keeping the car on the road at its breakneck speed.

            It was not a mission of heroics that brought Kitty and her steadfast companion Kurt Wagner out into the night but one of personal necessity. Kitty waved a flashlight back and forth across the sidewalk, sighing heavily; “Are you SURE you dropped your phone out here?”

            “I had it just before I walked home with Rogue!” Kurt insisted. “And when I got home, I didn’t! It’s somewhere on this route!” He swept his own flashlight over the area. He then looked out into the street, which was bare of traffic. “Hmm. Around here, I was joking around with Rogue and we went out into the street. Maybe it’s there.”

            “Then it would’ve gotten run over by a car,” Kitty groaned, “and there’s, like, no point in us being out here.”

            Kurt hopped out into the middle of the road, spinning around with his flashlight. “Call me again!” he urged Kitty. “Maybe I can hear it ring from here!”

            Kitty retrieved her cell phone from her pocket, dialing Kurt’s number. She pressed it to her ear, not expecting any results. As she’d suspected, there was no sign of a ringtone.

            She turned to stare idly out into the street at the same time that the car going way too fast turned onto that road.

            Lance and Pietro both saw the person illuminated in their headlights. “HIT THE BRAKES!” Pietro cried.

            Lance slammed his foot down, his blood running cold as the car continued to skid under all the momentum he had built up.

            “KURT!” Kitty dove out into the road, locking her arms around her friend just as the car reached him.

            Car and humans met; Kitty’s power phased both herself and Kurt right through the entire vehicle, which only halted once both pedestrians had passed right through the rear. It was only then that Kitty and Kurt noticed the obnoxiously loud rock song blaring from the car stereo.

            Lance and Pietro sat petrified in the car’s forefront. “Was that…?” Pietro asked, eyes wide as he pressed into his seat.

            Lance took a few more moments to let his heart rate slow down before he threw open the door. “It was,” he confirmed in a panic.

            Pietro certainly didn’t want to face Kitty and Kurt down after nearly running them over, but he felt compelled not to make Lance go alone; he popped open the passenger-side door, moving slowly enough to let Lance get behind the car first.

            “Whoa,” Kurt said as Kitty slowly disentangled from around him. “That was close! Thank you, Kitty!”

            “TOO close,” Kitty agreed. “What kind of idiot drives THAT FAST in Bayville? And listening to that STUPID music!”

            Once Kurt recognized the pair approaching, he informed her, “I think it’s YOUR idiot.”

            “LANCE?” Kitty cried in disbelief.

            “Kitty!” Lance rushed toward her. “Are you okay – “

            His arms were outstretched as he approached rapidly; as soon as he got close, Kitty gave his chest a rough shove that indicated he should stay back. “Don’t TOUCH me!” she cried. “You could have KILLED me!”

            “I am so, so sorry – “ Lance attempted.

            “Why were you even GOING that fast?” Kitty screamed. “Weren’t you looking where you were going?”

            “I was!” Lance defended. “That’s why I slammed the brakes! I didn’t mean to run you over! I’m just glad you’re okay!”

            Pietro remained in the scene’s background, close to the car’s rear. He had nothing to contribute here. He found himself contending yet again with the feeling he’d been filled with when he spotted Lance and Kitty together in the restaurant: absolute frustration. Unlike some people who might be less self-aware, he knew exactly why he hated seeing Lance and Kitty interact.

            “Wait a minute.” Kitty’s eyes traveled to the vehicle that had almost mowed her and Kurt down. “Lance…that’s not your car.”

            Lance was thrown into a panic, though he did his best to encase it in a relatively calm exterior. “I can explain.”

            “Whose car is that?” Kitty asked. “That looks like WAY more than what you can afford.”

            “Well…” Lance didn’t know how to respond. He certainly couldn’t lie to Kitty. “It’s…”

            His hesitation gave him away. Kitty gasped, eyes wide. “You STOLE that car, didn’t you?”

            “I was going to put it back where we found it!” Lance said hurriedly.

            Now this was an interesting development, Pietro thought. Trouble in paradise.

            “I can’t BELIEVE you!” Kitty raged. “Every time I think you’ve changed! Do you even know how many chances I’ve given you? But you stole a CAR!”

            He could have blamed Pietro, Lance knew. But something within him, perhaps as simple as a code of honor, prevented him from bringing Pietro into it. “I know this looks bad – “

            “Yeah, it sure does,” Kitty confirmed. “Listen, Lance…you can be sweet to me all you want, but I just…I can’t make something serious with somebody who thinks it’s okay to just steal a car and go joyriding around Bayville!”

            “I’ll never do it again!” Lance said desperately.

            “Yeah,” Kitty reminded him, “like you were never going to do it again after you wrecked the soccer stadium to reveal mutants to the world, or you were never going to do it again after you robbed the school carnival, or you were never going to do it again after you rigged all those accidents so you could play hero…” She found tears were welling up the more examples she found. “Lance…I like you a lot, but…I don’t know if you’re really the person I hoped you were. Maybe this just…won’t work out.”

            “Kitty!” Lance said in horror, reaching out to her.

            His hand phased through her upper arm before she backed away. “Don’t touch me,” she commanded.

            “Kitty, please!” Lance pleaded. “We can talk about this!”

            “We have talked about it,” Kitty reminded him. “Just…I promise I won’t tell anyone about the car if you put it back where you found it. But I don’t want you to call me back for another date.”

            “KITTY!” Lance repeated, taking another step toward her.

            Kurt stepped in between them, facing Lance defensively. “She said not to TOUCH her!” Kurt growled.

            “Lance,” Pietro broke in. “Let’s go.”

            “But…” Lance found himself at a loss.

            “Let’s GO,” Pietro insisted, turning back to re-enter the car.

            Kitty’s glare sent Lance off; he stormed back to the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind him and throwing the vehicle into gear.

            The car sped away from Kurt and Kitty; the latter collapsed to her knees, now bawling since there was no Lance to see her put her guard down.

            “Oh, Kitty…” Kurt said softly, “I’m so sorry…”

            “I’ll be fine,” Kitty told him. “I should’ve been smarter about him. I should’ve figured this out a long time ago.”

            All the same, they gave up on the search for Kurt’s phone for the night so they could return to the mansion and drown Kitty’s sorrows in ice cream.

            Lance drove in silence all the way back to the Jeep’s hiding place. The radio had been shut off. Pietro knew better than to say a single word. He was inwardly glad Kitty had finally broken it off. It was a long time coming as far as Pietro was concerned. Lance should, by all rights, be happy. Kitty wasn’t ready to accept him for who he was, as had become evident that very night. All the same, Pietro knew Lance would not see it that way at all.

            The car was parked. Lance didn’t get out. “This is your fault,” he growled. “Kitty and I are over because of YOU. If you hadn’t wanted to know how to hot-wire the car - !”

            “You were the one who offered,” Pietro reminded him. “You were also the one who taught me, and you were the one who drove the car. You could’ve just told me no. Or made me ride alone.”

            “SAVE IT,” Lance snarled. “Just get out of here and go run off to wherever you’re staying tonight.”

            “Gladly,” Pietro said as he departed the car. “Good to know you’d rather mope over some dumb girl than be nice to the person you apparently consider family.”

            “I SAID GET OUT!”

            Pietro took off like a bullet out of a gun. Lance rested his forehead against the steering wheel before realizing it was in his best interest not to linger in a stolen car. He hustled back to the Jeep, pulling it into gear and heading back to the Brotherhood house.

            Pietro had only been back in town for two days and already he’d managed to ruin everything.


	3. Kissing Toads and Princes

Lance had spent a lot of time thinking. The night of the car theft incident, falling asleep, he had been filled with pure rage and nothing else. The following morning, he awoke feeling a void growing deep inside as new thoughts tore at his consciousness.

      Kitty had called him out; he never changed. On some level, she was right. Perhaps it was time to face that fact.

      And with that conclusion came a rush of other thoughts – about identity, about morality, about love – that Lance wasn’t yet ready to confront.

      He ate breakfast in silence as Fred and Todd talked about something he was tuning out. (It occurred to him that given their unchanged dynamic, Fred probably hadn’t acted on what he’d told Lance about. Perhaps that had only been a passing phase. Lance still found Fred’s confession somewhat hard to believe.) The rest of the day was spent lounging around the house in different locations, battling his own internal monologue.

      He couldn’t be “good” enough for Kitty. He hadn’t been “bad” enough for Mystique or Magneto. What did that even mean?

      In the late afternoon, Lance wandered into the living room to continue having his reverie there only to find it occupied not by Fred or Todd but, to his surprise, Wanda, who was flipping through a book that was demanding her most severe concentration, from the looks of it. Concentration it was probably best not to break.

      But Lance couldn’t help himself. “You’re out of your room,” he observed.

      “I am,” Wanda told him, not looking up from her reading material.

      “Are you…” He felt as though he were walking in a minefield, but there was no choice but to charge across it. “Doing better?”

      “Relatively speaking,” she said roughly. “I wanted to be closer to where there were actually people.”

      “But you’re just reading a book,” Lance pointed out.

      “Closer,” Wanda reminded him. “Not WITH people. Hearing the noise helps.” She then looked up from the book, staring Lance dead in the eye. “But you haven’t made much noise today.”

      “I had a bad night,” Lance told her frankly.

      “You want to talk about it,” Wanda observed. It was a statement, not a question.

      “I want to forget about it,” Lance grunted. “Unfortunately, I can’t. I lost Kitty.”

      Wanda flinched. “Lost?”

      Lance realized how that sounded. “She’s fine!” he said hurriedly. “Even though I did almost run her over with a stolen car. She just broke up with me after that.”

      Wanda’s expression took on a distinct aura of surprise. “You really did have a bad night.”

      “I keep thinking I have to fix this,” Lance groaned, “and then realizing I don’t know if I should.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Anyway. I’m just glad you’re doing better.”

      “Thank you,” Wanda told him, her eyes flicking back down to the book.

      Lance nearly left, but then Wanda said, “I’m sorry.”

      “What?”

      “Sorry you lost her,” Wanda clarified. “She was a good girl.”

      “Yeah, and that’s exactly the problem,” Lance groaned.

      He turned to leave. He paused. He turned back. Against all his better judgment, he told Wanda, “I also ran into Pietro last night.”

      Wanda flinched, refusing to look up from her book.”

      “I…sort of…” Lance fumbled for the words. “I said he could come back to the house. After last night, I don’t think he will, but I guess it’s possible.”

      “No one’s stopping him,” Wanda grunted.

      “I’m a little worried about him,” Lance confessed.

      “Don’t be,” Wanda replied. “He always gets by.”

      “I just feel like he’s lost right now,” Lance went on. “He told me he just wants a family, and I think he really meant it. Good to know he can be serious for once in his life. I think…he wants to make things right with you.”

      Wanda let out a long sigh. “He wants a family,” she said solemnly. “I want a brother. I don’t think either of us is getting what we want.”

      “Will you be okay if he does come back?” Lance asked.

      It took Wanda a long time to answer, and Lance thought, at first, she was giving him the silent treatment for bringing up Pietro in her presence. Then she said, at last, “You’re right about him being lost. I’m worried about him too. I know I shouldn’t be.”

      “That’s…not a definitive answer,” Lance realized.

      “I don’t think I have a definitive answer,” Wanda admitted.

      “Fair,” Lance said with a shrug. Finding he had no more to say, he told her, “Enjoy your book.”

      “It’s good,” Wanda confirmed.

      Lance exited the room then, and Wanda had a few blissful moments alone before she became aware of a presence hovering over her shoulder, reading the same text she was, heralded by the scent of breath that hadn’t crossed paths with toothpaste in several days.

      “You know,” Todd’s voice came from right next to Wanda’s ear, “I never was big on the fantasy genre. But for you, I could learn to love it.”

      Her telekinesis shot him across the room to smack into the farthest wall.

      “I get it, baby,” Todd said weakly from where he’d impacted. “Another time.” He set about peeling himself off the wall.

      Fred happened to be passing by just in time to observe. He was at quite the disadvantage at the moment, given how much Todd still fawned over Wanda. It would take something significant to change his mind. Fred knew he couldn’t do anything to sabotage Wanda; he liked her and was hoping to get to know her better.

      It came to him like a flash. Perhaps old plans hadn’t worked on Jean Grey, but he and Jean were never meant to be. And Fred certainly wasn’t a quitter.

 

* * *

 

      When night fell, Lance slunk out of the house, loading up several cans of his trusted spray paint into the back of the Jeep.

      If he wasn’t going to be able to stay on the right side of the tracks enough for Kitty, he might as well stop trying. Besides, he now needed to get his mind off both Kitty and Pietro. The only route left was art.

      He pulled the car to a halt at the edge of the park, hauling the spray cans along with him on a hike. He had a wall in mind. It had tempted him for a while now, that blank gray canvas awaiting decoration.

      At last, it loomed before him, bordered by leafy trees and illuminated by a charming lamp set along a walking path that passed the wall. Lance had never been sure of the wall’s purpose in the park’s layout. Perhaps it cordoned off an area used for another pastime. Lance didn’t much care. It was featureless, it was boring, and it could use some improvement.

      Lance selected a deep blue, shaking it up in his fingers before firing at the wall. Quickly, he worked a simple but pleasing design with the blue before setting it down and going for an orange. The colors’ natural clash would provide the desired effect of standing out, of getting noticed. Maybe someone else besides Lance would actually find it pretty. He did take a certain pride in his graffiti; it was more than just rebellion. It was a skill. Bucking the rules to do it was just a bonus: the kind that lit him up inside the same way driving a stolen car did.

      Backing up to observe what he’d done with the orange on blue, Lance said to himself, “Nice. Lance Alvers, you are an artist.”

      He nearly jumped five feet high when a voice muttered from behind him, “Will you quiet down?”

      Lance had thought he was alone. Company might put his art project to a premature end. He whipped around to locate the source of the voice. Well, it was no wonder he hadn’t seen anyone there to begin with. The speaker was lying curled up on a bench that was just out of range of the lamp, shrouded in shadow. Probably someone homeless, Lance realized, and not in any mood to rat Lance out to the authorities. He could probably get away with continuing to paint if he kept quiet and didn’t disturb the thin figure anymore. The person, Lance realized, who had his face turned away, but judging from the body type, was only about the same age as Lance. The person who, the more Lance looked at him, appeared suspiciously similar to –

      Cautiously, Lance approached the bench. Given a clearer view, he realized the identity of the person before him. Sure, Lance had been angry, but this was too much.

      The sight of Pietro Maximoff trying to sleep on a hard park bench was all too concerning.

      “Hey,” Lance said as he gently put a hand on Pietro’s shoulder, shaking it lightly. “Wake up.”

      “Seriously?” Pietro murmured as he crossed out of sleep into wakefulness. “Do you not have anything better to do than bother the homeless kid trying to sleep?” He rolled over, blinking bleary eyes, to get a better look at his tormentor. That was when recognition hit him. “Alvers?”

      “Okay, this is going too far,” Lance said worriedly. “Aren’t you cold out here?”

      “Yeah,” Pietro confirmed, “but I can take it.”

      “That does NOT look comfortable, though,” Lance went on.

      “It’s fine,” Pietro insisted.

      “No, it’s not,” Lance argued. “You need to come home. Seriously. You’re going to get sick or something out here.”

      “I’m sorry,” Pietro snarked. “You must have me confused for Kitty Pryde. She’s all you care about, after all.”

      So Pietro was mad at Lance now. Lance supposed that was fair. The longer he had to sit on the previous night’s incident, the more he realized Pietro might not have been as much at fault as Lance had credited him with. “Well, she’s done with me now,” Lance reminded him, “so I’m stuck worrying about you instead.”

      “Good to know I’m your second pick,” Pietro groaned.

      “Will you shut up?” Lance sighed. “I’m trying to actually care about you here, and you aren’t making it easy.”

      Pietro worked himself into a sitting position. “You obviously aren’t going to leave me alone,” he observed.

      “You’re right,” Lance insisted, sitting down next to Pietro. “I’m not.”

      “So what?” Pietro asked. “Do you actually want me to come home this time?”

      “Against my better judgment,” Lance told him. “But seriously, I’m…worried for you out here.”

      “You don’t think I can rough it?”

      “Does it always have to be about being the best at whatever with you?” Lance groaned in exasperation. “Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me you’re the best at catching pneumonia, and then you’ll go out and get pneumonia just to prove you can beat it.”

      “For your information,” Pietro replied, “I COULD beat pneumonia pretty fast.”

      Lance couldn’t tell if that was a joke. It was utterly the wrong moment for a joke, but the statement on its own was ridiculous. “Look,” he sighed, “I messed up. Again. About you and Kitty. I’m not saying you had nothing to do with it, but it wasn’t as much of your fault as I said.”

      “No duh,” Pietro said in exasperation.

      “The thing is,” Lance went on, “the car was my idea. And…I LOVED driving that car. I loved driving it BECAUSE I stole it. I knew I didn’t wanna keep it, but it made me feel alive. Doing things like that always does. If I really wanted something with Kitty, I’d have to give that kind of thing up forever. And I don’t wanna do that.”

      “You’re just figuring this out NOW?” Pietro said in disbelief. “Because the rest of us could see it the minute you MET that girl.”

      “You weren’t even part of the Brotherhood when I met Kitty. I wasn’t even part of the Brotherhood when I met Kitty!”

      “Yeah, but I can picture it,” Pietro said mischievously. In a high falsetto, he mocked, “Oh, Lance! My name is Kitty Pryde and I’m a good girl from the right side of the tracks! You are sooooooo bad and sooooooo hot! Come make out with me behind the school!”

      Lance bit his lip to keep from laughing. Against all odds, that had been legitimately humorous. “That is NOT how it went,” he managed with a straight face.

      “So,” Pietro asked, hoping not to betray how hopeful he was, “are you finally over her?”

      “No, I’m not OVER her!” Lance groaned. “I can’t just switch it off like that! I…I have a lot of things to figure out, okay? That’s why I came out here. Because I’m not ready to figure them all out yet, and I needed to express myself.”

      That was when Pietro thought to look at the wall, zeroing in on the small portion Lance had decorated. “Orange on blue,” he remarked. “That’s a statement.”

      “That’s what I was going for,” Lance confirmed.

      “You should finish it,” Pietro told him.

      “I’m going to,” Lance promised. “I just couldn’t…”

      “Couldn’t what?” Pietro asked. By now, all trace of grudge was erased from his expression, and he was smirking proudly.

      “Couldn’t leave you alone out here,” Lance grunted reluctantly. “Don’t make me say it again.” Referring, of course, to the fact that he was worried about Pietro despite all Pietro had done to irritate him.

      “Well, I’m doing just fine,” Pietro informed Lance; it was a lie. “So go finish up.”

      Lance knew that was his cue. He gingerly rose from the bench, approaching his paints once more. He selected his next color, a green that would blend well with the edge of the blue, and began to spray. He could feel Pietro’s eyes on him, and the idea of painting for an audience made him wary. Usually, his audience discovered his work the next morning.

      Pietro did more than just watch Lance. He took in every edge and curve of Lance’s form, committing it to memory. Lance always did have a stunning body. Pietro had never lied to himself about that, but letting on to Lance would have been a loss of ground. Pietro wanted Lance to figure it out on his own: to not make him ask anything of Lance.

      A fair amount of green was spread across the wall before Lance realized he just couldn’t work while being watched. The obvious solution presented itself, and he was averse to the idea at first. But the memory of last night was still fresh: not only that of Kitty severing her tie, but of the joyride above the speed limit, outdated rock and roll blasting from the speakers, Pietro in the passenger seat. And Lance realized Pietro being there was part of what had made it so thrilling.

      He turned back around, suggesting, “Come on.”

      “Come on what?” Pietro asked, tilting his head in confusion.

      “Come paint on the wall,” Lance clarified. “I’ll take half and you take half.”

      “You serious?”

      “Dead serious,” Lance confirmed. “Don’t tell me you’ve never done this before.”

      Not with spray cans, Pietro thought as he got up from the bench – oh, how his joints were stiff from trying to sleep curled up – and approached the supply of cans. “I just don’t want to make your half look TOO bad by comparison.”

      “Oh, I’m more worried about YOUR half,” Lance jeered.

      Pietro’s hand seized a can of bright crimson. He approached his assigned segment of wall tentatively.

      Lance could sense his hesitation. “Don’t think too hard about it,” he advised. “Just make something. Whatever you feel like. That’s what it’s about.”

      Pietro was almost startled by the first burst of paint he ejected from the can. Taking Lance’s words to heart, he pressed down to keep the stream steady, holding it right up to the wall to apply the red. He let his hand float wherever it wanted, no concrete design in mind.

      He kept ahold of the red for a good amount of time before switching it out for a deep purple. Lance had, after all, amassed quite the collection of colors. The pair painted away, saying nothing to each other as they created a cavalcade of color where once there was nothing but stone gray.

      Pietro thought to look to Lance once again, perhaps to check on his work, perhaps to admire his body, perhaps both. When he did so, he found Lance had been possessed by the whim to look over at Pietro at the exact same time. They made eye contact.

      Instinctively, they both smiled at each other.

      Then their focus returned to the wall.

* * *

 

      Todd was abducted shortly after departing the bathroom.

      One minute, he was simply minding his own business, entering the upper hallway as people do. Then he had a blindfold slipped around his eyes from behind.

      “What the – “

      That was when the rope was wrapped around his upper arms and secured behind his back.

      “HEY!” Todd cried in a sudden panic. He was lifted up by someone much stronger than him, carried down the stairs. He kicked out in response, his mind racing. Whoever had ahold of him could only be one of the enemy. And knowing his luck, it was probably the former Magneto lackey with the fancy accent and the weird eyes; the one who could make him explode on a whim. “LET GO OF ME, WILL YA? PUT ME DOWN!”

      He was put down, eventually, in a chair. Another rope bound him to the chair’s back. “YOU’RE GONNA PAY FOR THIS!” he threatened: emptily, since he wasn’t at all confident he could fight back against his abductor. He wobbled about in the chair, hoping to somehow break free of the restraints when in fact all he was working to do was tip the chair over. It nearly toppled completely before whoever had tied Todd up simply righted it again in one fluid motion.

      Now Todd was well and truly nervous, and his voice betrayed it. “Y-you better let me go,” he said in a shaking voice. “I…I’m w-warnin’ you…”

      That was when the blindfold was whipped off.

      Todd didn’t know what he had expected to see. It certainly wasn’t the dining room table laden with lit candles, the window shades drawn to dim the lights. He hadn’t expected to see the one bowl left unbroken in the house that could have been considered fine china laid out before him, filled with some sort of unidentifiable soup, while way too many spoons for a single bowl of soup lay to one side of it and, inexplicably, an array of forks on the other. Todd finally found an answer to this conundrum when his eyes came to rest on Fred, who was holding the blindfold.

      “Surprise,” Fred told him.

      “What,” Todd panted, “are you tryin’ to give me a heart attack?”

      “No,” Fred replied. “I’m trying to WIN your heart.”

      And here Todd thought he was done being caught completely off guard. “…Say WHAT now?”

      Fred had almost completely recreated the setup he’d first utilized when trying to win over Jean. So it hadn’t worked on her; she had insisted to him that he couldn’t force a person to like him. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t work now, when it was important. “I have the whole night planned,” Fred explained. “Dinner and dancing. It’s going to be the perfect date.”

      At first, the implications of this being a date didn’t really sink in; Todd was more concerned with how he’d gotten there in the first place. “And you needed to TIE ME UP for this?”

      “I thought you might not agree at first,” Fred admitted. “So I figured I’d get you this far, and then you’d change your mind.”

      “Change my mind about – “ That was when it finally hit. “Wait. You’re tryin’ to get me to…go out with you?”

      “Yeah,” Fred affirmed. “I know you like Wanda now, but after tonight, you’ll see.”

      “See WHAT?”

      “How good we go together,” Fred explained.

      To say Todd was blindsided was an understatement. He hadn’t even seen the shadow of this coming. He had, in the span of less than ten minutes, been alerted to the fact that one of his closest friends had romantic feelings for him as well as the fact that said friend was willing to go so far as tying him down to a chair and forcing him to sit through a date (how did he expect any dancing to go down when Todd was tied to a chair, by the way?) in order to get him to pay more attention to Fred than current crush Wanda.

      All right. He could roll with this.

      “Fine,” Todd said. “You want a date? I’ll humor ya. We’ll do it. The dinner, the dancing, the works. But first, you gotta untie me. I can’t eat whatever this is without my hands. Well, okay, I can, but I’d rather not.”

      “All right,” Fred agreed. “I’ll – wait. You’re not gonna just run away as soon as I untie you, are you?”

      “No way!” Todd said frantically. “Promise! Toad’s honor!”

      “Okay,” Fred said with a nod.

      He undid all the ropes restraining Todd, then stepped back. Quick as a blink, Todd lunged across the room, throwing open the curtains of the nearest window, hoisting the pane upward, and leaping outside the house through his route of egress. “SO LONG, SUCKER!” he called back as he bounded across the yard.

      Fred was immediately filled with anger, and he wasn’t sure if it was at Todd or himself. Maybe he should have learned from the Jean incident. Maybe he should have taken a different route to “just go for it,” as Lance had advised. But that didn’t excuse Todd from breaking the promise he’d made to at least “humor” Fred on this matter.

      Fred hoisted up the chair he had intended to sit on. “He was supposed to LIKE ME!” he roared, drawing the chair back to swing it at the wall and shatter it.

      He didn’t hear the soft footfalls that sounded from just inside the window behind him. What he did hear, halting the chair’s trajectory, was a sheepish “Hey, uh…maybe don’t do that.”

      Startled, Fred turned to see a rather flustered Todd returned to the dining room. “I, uh…I changed my mind,” Todd admitted. “I’ll do it. The whole date thing.”

      It had taken a few seconds for him to think it over, but only that long. Was there really that bad of a downside to this? All he had to do was eat dinner with someone he already considered a friend, then dance with him for a bit, and it would be over. He could work on shaking Fred’s affections some other day. Though, then again, thinking over Fred’s confession had brought up some old thoughts Todd had thought he was done with. To put it simply, he didn’t want to be too hasty in making his decision about the situation.

      Maybe he didn’t even want to dissuade Fred right away. After all, they were close.

      Fred lowered the chair back into place as Todd hopped up onto the chair on the other end of the table, taking a more comfortable position with his feet on the seat. “So what is this, anyway?” he asked, sticking a finger into the soup.

      “I made it out of basically everything we had in the kitchen that would go together,” Fred admitted. “I wanted this to be special, so I put in a few surprises.”

      A fat dead cockroach floated to the surface of the concoction.

      “I caught that upstairs,” Fred said as he observed Todd’s interest. “I thought you’d like it.”

      This really wouldn’t be so bad after all, Todd decided. One flick of the tongue put the cockroach in his mouth. It was delightfully crunchy. He couldn’t say Fred hadn’t been thoughtful. “You were right on that front,” he admitted through a full mouth.

      Both boys raised spoons at the same time, plunging them into the soup bowls that rested before them.

* * *

 

      Once Pietro got into the swing of spray painting, he picked up his usual speed, and in almost no time, he had covered his allotted wall while Lance was still working. Lance then had to put up with being silently watched once more; he could feel a certain satisfaction radiating off Pietro, and this was almost inspiring, spurring Lance to choose even bolder colors.

      Once he’d finished, he took up the red – the only color he hadn’t used – and used it to sign a quick “Lance” in messy letters in the corner of his display. Following suit, Pietro scooped up a can of silver (what else?) and scrawled a “Pietro” in script on his half. Then he and Lance stepped back to the bench to look at the whole picture.

      It was obvious, signatures aside, that the vandalism had been committed by two different artists. For one, they’d gone with completely different color schemes. For another, Lance’s style was angular, blocky, while Pietro’s was fluid and curvy. Yet where the two halves came together in the middle, the transition seemed natural: a visible seam, but one that bonded the parts of what was always meant to be a whole.

      “Nice work,” Lance said coyly.

      “Yours isn’t bad either,” Pietro replied, even more coy.

      They sat back down on the bench.

      “Well?” Pietro asked. “Work anything out?”

      “That was a good distraction,” Lance admitted, “but now I’m just left to face the facts.”

      “What are the facts?”

      Was this really the kind of thing a person could say to Pietro Maximoff and expect to be taken seriously? All the same, Lance had already thrown his fate in with Pietro’s, painting along with him, hijacking a car and taking a ride with him. And Pietro had already confided in him – Lance was now sure that had been legitimate confiding – about his need for a family. Lance decided to chance it.

      “I don’t know who I am,” he sighed. “It’s like every time I get mixed up with some big-timer like Mystique or Magneto, they expect me to be this heartless evil machine. I just can’t do that. That’s why I thought maybe…maybe I was better than I knew. Maybe I was the kind of person that did go with Kitty. And she made me want to change, but just enough to get her interested. If I became the person she wants me to be, I wouldn’t be me then either. It’s actually probably a really good thing we’re not involved anymore.”

      “It’s almost too bad your breakup wasn’t my fault,” Pietro commented. “Then you could thank me.”

      “Pietro, don’t. Just…don’t.”

      Pietro fell into silence to let Lance continue.

      “I just feel like I haven’t really been me in a long time,” Lance confessed. “I’ve been trying to impress one person or another. But now I don’t have to. So what do I have left to be? I don’t even know.”

      His gaze was focused straight ahead on the mural – he chose to think of it as a mural, even though the city wouldn’t categorize it as such – as he expelled this last thought. Now it was in Pietro’s hands, and this was exactly the time, Lance knew, for Pietro to make light of his feelings, rudely dismiss them, and turn the conversation back to himself –

      “You mean you don’t know who you are? Seriously, Alvers, it’s obvious. Everyone knows who you are. Even I know who you are.”

      Or maybe he would say that instead.

      “Are you sure you’re not talking about what I pretended to be?” Lance retorted.

      “No, I know exactly who you are,” Pietro said confidently.

      “How can you know me better than me?” Lance asked skeptically.

      “Because you’re too caught up in your own head to look at it,” Pietro answered.

      “I’ll bite,” Lance relented. “What am I?”

      “You’re a punk with a conscience,” Pietro told him. “You like wreaking havoc for fun, but you don’t really wanna hurt anyone. You’re not one of the good guys, but you could be worse. That’s why I’m glad you’re looking after Wanda and not me. I know you’re taking care of her.”

      “As much as she wants to be taken care of,” Lance corrected.

      “Of course you’re not a hero,” Pietro went on. “You’re not a bad guy, either. You don’t have to be one or the other, you know.”

      It seemed to make sense, so Lance decided to accept it at face value. “It would be a whole lot easier to just be one or the other.”

      “Yeah, well, since when have our lives ever been easy?” Pietro retorted.

      “Good point,” Lance said, almost laughing. He peeled his eyes away from the mural, looking to Pietro directly. Pietro’s deep blue eyes were already fixed upon Lance; this whole time, Pietro had been beholding Lance’s profile, watching him speak. “So,” Lance said with a smile, “if I’m a punk with a conscience, you wanna know what you are?”

      “I have a guess,” Pietro replied, “but tell me anyway.”

      “You’re a jerk,” Lance teased. “A jerk with jerk filling.”

      “Called it,” Pietro laughed.

      “But…” Lance gave a light shrug. “Somewhere in there, you have a little redeemability.” Seeing Pietro’s face twist into a scowl, Lance clarified, “Not GOOD. You are SUCH a bad guy. But there are little bits in there that make you more tolerable.” He playfully tapped Pietro’s chest for emphasis, as though pointing exactly to one of these spots. “Like what you said to me just now. Or the fact that you care about who’s looking after Wanda.”

      “I do not!” Pietro brushed Lance’s hand away lightly. “I just said that to make YOU feel better!”

      “Oh, yeah?” Lance challenged. “And why do you care about if I feel better?”

      Because you cared about if I did, Pietro thought. What he said instead was “To get you to shut up.”

      “Sure it was.”

      Lance’s eyes traveled back to stare directly into Pietro’s, and the vividness of that blue struck him. It was almost the same shade he’d started out with on his half of the wall. This was getting dangerous, and Lance knew it. He was flying too close to Pietro, getting pulled in by his gravity, making a habit out of relying on him to have a serious conversation. Yet for all Pietro had angered him over the past three days, things had somehow turned out all right. With it in mind that he wasn’t ever going to be completely good, Lance was well aware that Kitty wasn’t the person for him, and as much as the breakup still stung, he knew Kitty would only hold him back from being the best punk with a conscience he could be. He needed something different. He wanted something different. Maybe what he wanted was a jerk with jerk filling to balance him out.

      The lit lamp played with the shadows on Pietro’s face, making him look far too good. Or maybe he always looked that way. Lance realized he’d been staring in silence for a long time, and Pietro was probably wondering what was wrong with him. It would be sensible to turn away.

      Lance didn’t want to turn away. “Pietro…” With only that as his warning, he leaned in closer to his companion, first reaching out to plant a hand on Pietro’s shoulder to keep him in place. He was almost close enough when he stopped, struck once again by doubts that what he had been about to carry out was a very bad idea.

      A bad idea, it seemed, Pietro had shared, because the next words out of his mouth were “Are you going to kiss me or not, Lance?”

      That was all the encouragement Lance needed to close the distance. His other hand seized Pietro’s other shoulder as their lips met. Lance hadn’t been sure what, exactly, he expected, but the result was better. Pietro’s lips were surprisingly soft; Lance’s hands gently wrapped around Pietro’s back to pull him closer. Pietro then seized Lance’s shoulders with his own hands, fingers digging in deep. A tongue thirstily found its way inside Lance’s mouth.

      Lance was the first to break it off. It no longer seemed like a bad idea at all; it seemed like exactly what had needed to happen. Lance did, however, need to breathe at some point. He left his arms wrapped around Pietro, who, once released, commented, “About time, Lance.”

      “First-name basis,” Lance muttered.

      He hadn’t been sure Pietro heard it, but apparently, he had, as his response was “You think after a kiss like that, I’m going to keep calling you ‘Alvers’?”

      “You wanted that for a while,” Lance realized. “How long?”

      “Since the Tabby days at LEAST,” Pietro replied.

      “That doesn’t add up,” Lance realized. “You have been on a HUNDRED dates with different people since then.”

      “Yeah, because you weren’t interested,” Pietro told him. “You were going gaga with cat scratch fever. What was I supposed to do, just go for it and hope you’d change your mind?”

      Where had Lance heard those words before? Oh. Right. His advice to Fred. He suddenly had a creeping doubt that those words would backfire on him. He pushed it out of his mind, choosing instead to focus on how right Pietro felt in his arms and how Pietro’s grip on his shoulders had loosened enough to be comfortable.

      “Well, I changed my mind now,” Lance stated definitively.

      “This better not be a Band-Aid on the Kitty thing,” Pietro warned. “You think you don’t like it when I make you feel disposable? Goes both ways.”

      “Yeah, you made that clear,” Lance recalled. He shifted a bit to get a tighter grip; he and Pietro were both leaning against the back of the bench now, relaxed, though still holding onto each other hungrily. “Kitty still hurts. But…I dunno, this feels…right.” He paused. “This might have been going on for a while, actually. It would sure explain why I miss you so much every time you leave.”

      “I…might have missed you too,” Pietro grumbled, not particularly happy about showing that soft spot but knowing it was integral to supporting what they were building. “Even while I was out with Dad. I really TRIED not to think about you, but you kept showing up in my head without being invited. It was annoying.”

      “You’re annoying. In general.”

      “Tell me something I don’t know.”

      A new realization dawned on Lance: “So this is why you sabotaged my date last night.”

      “If you’re talking about the restaurant, bingo,” Pietro confirmed. “If you’re talking about the car, that was still your idea, and if you think I had any possible way to PLAN her being there when we drove down that street, you’re an idiot. I have ALWAYS hated seeing you with her, though.” He grinned. “Now tell me how insane it drove you to see me going out with all the others.”

      “Okay, turn down the ego,” Lance grumbled. “THAT didn’t get to me.”

      “I figured,” Pietro said calmly, revealing to Lance that his last demand had been a joke.

      Lance decided then he was thirsting for another kiss; he leaned in again, and Pietro was the one to close the distance this time, his teeth giving Lance’s lower lip a playful little nip on the way. This kiss lasted a while; Pietro was the first to break it this time around, repositioning his mouth nearer to Lance’s ear. Lance readied himself to hear some sort of dirty talk, but found himself utterly surprised by Pietro’s plaintive statement:

      “I want to go home.”

 

* * *

 

      “So,” Todd said after getting halfway through the bowl, “about you’n’me.” The cockroach hadn’t been the only insect Fred had spiced the dish up with. It was a wonder how he’d managed to swat down and collect so many houseflies over the course of one day.

      “Tell me,” Fred encouraged.

      “If I’m bein’ honest,” Todd confessed, “we got somethin’. Dunno exactly what to call it, but it’s somethin’. We’ve always been kinda the outsiders.”

      “Not in the Brotherhood,” Fred argued.

      “No, not here,” Todd agreed, “but everywhere else. You’n’me stick out way more than Lance, Pietro, and Wanda ever did. We’ve been through the wringer.”

      “I know,” Fred recalled. “I still remember what you said to me when we met. How people laughed at you too.”

      “I did?” Todd replied. “Well, I’m not doubtin’ I did. I mean, it’s true. I’m bein’ real here, you get me.”

      “And I’ve always felt like you get me,” Fred said lovingly.

      “Well, I like to think I do,” Todd agreed. “So if I got this straight, you have a thing for me?”

      “…Didn’t I make that obvious?” Fred replied.

      “Well, yeah,” Todd admitted. “And if I’m bein’ real here…maybe I thought about it. You know, I thought about you. Like that. I mean, you ain’t bad in the looks department. But it never really went anywhere, and then Wanda came along, and…” A dreamy smile overtook his face. “Wanda,” he sighed. No, even he knew this was the wrong time and place; he shook the smile away.

      Fred had barely even noticed the bit regarding Wanda. “You really did like me?” he said to confirm. Even though that had been his goal, and he thought he’d been confident that Todd’s heart would be easy to win, this still caught him by surprise.

      “Well, I wasn’t all sure about it,” Todd explained. “And I didn’t wanna ruin nothin’.”

      “I didn’t either,” Fred admitted, “but then Lance told me what I should do.”

      “LANCE told you to tie me to a chair?” Todd said angrily.

      “Not in those exact words,” Fred said hurriedly. “That was my idea.”

      “That was messed up, y’know!” Todd snapped. Then, averting his gaze, “…And kinda sweet comin’ from you. Now that I know what this is about.” He fiercely looked back up directly into Fred’s eyes, and did Fred HAVE to be giving Todd such doe-eyes right now? “But I ain’t makin’ any promises that this is gonna go anywhere!”

      “I know,” Fred recalled. “You’re just humoring me.” He could still hope.

      “Yeah,” Todd confirmed, feeling somewhat disappointed in the inevitable conclusion that he would have to let Fred down. He cleared out the last of the contents of the bowl not with a spoon, but by giving it one thorough sweep with his tongue. Fred had finished his dinner a while ago, quick eater that he was. “So,” Todd reminded him, “turns out I owe you a dance.”

      Fred rose from his seat, moving to the empty space of the dining room, where a small boom box had been set up on a side table. Pressing a button, Fred cued it to play the opening notes of a slow ballad: one that, a long time ago, he had been ready to dedicate to Jean Grey, but had brought other associations to mind as his affections had shifted.

      “Classy,” Todd remarked as he hopped off his chair and stood to full height.

      They came together somewhat awkwardly at first, hands hesitating before making contact. Right hand clasped left; Todd’s other hand rested on Fred’s midsection by nature of him simply not being able to reach his shoulder, and Fred’s large, solid hand settled in on Todd’s shoulder in a way Todd realized he could get used to. (Where did THAT thought come from all of a sudden?) Once they’d connected, moving to the music came naturally. Each knew the other was a better dancer than he looked to be from the outside; people might judge from size or posture that neither had any grace, but they both remembered from their outing with Tabby Smith at the Sadie Hawkins dance that they were quite light on their feet.

      It was just humoring, Todd reminded himself. Fred was still just a friend, and after this night was over, Todd could get to work on reminding him of that. It did strike him that this was a quite different dance from Sadie Hawkins in a crucial way: there was no Tabby between them. Nothing separated them now, actually.

      “So as I was sayin’,” Todd went on, “how I think of you is…” Why was he still going on about this? This was only going to get Fred’s hopes up more. “It’s comfortable. That make sense? Bein’ around you is comfortable.” Stop talking. Stop it now.

      “It makes sense,” Fred confirmed. “I’ve felt that about you for a long time. The thing is, I know Wanda would want to change all these things about you if she was gonna give you a chance. She’d want you to wash your hair more, not eat flies so often, stand up straight, and not follow her around and give her so many pet names. And that’s okay. That’s the kind of person she needs. But I don’t want a single one of those things to change about you. I like you exactly the way you are. And if you followed me around like that, I’d be the happiest guy.”

      Todd nearly tripped then. He’d been blindsided completely. Fred’s words had pierced him right in the heart. No one had ever said anything of that ilk to him for as long as he’d lived. “You…” No. Don’t say anything. Don’t make it worse. Why are you still talking? “You ain’t so bad either, not by a long shot. Don’t you go changin’ on me either.”

      He found his footing, and with it, another comment. He had to crane his neck a bit to look Fred in the eye; “Except one thing. If you really like me, then maybe quit throwin’ me around so much!”

      Fred found himself sheepish. “I DO do that too much,” he realized. “I’m sorry.”

      “Hey, it’s fine.”

      Fred steered Todd into a gentle twirl before settling him back into their default position. The song had ended, but the subsequent one had been an equally decent one for slow dancing, so they had just let it play on. It was a nice moment, which was the absolutely baffling part of the entire night as far as Todd was concerned. It wasn’t like this was the physically closest he and Fred had even been. He had a special place on Fred’s shoulders, sort of a perch that was reserved for him and only him because he was light enough to carry there. He’d certainly spent enough time there that a little slow dance shouldn’t be a big deal.

      It occurred to him that a date might be best decorated with all the trappings. There was one thing he and Fred hadn’t discussed in this arrangement, and Todd certainly wasn’t going to be the one to –

      “So, what, are you expectin’ me to kiss you or somethin’?”

      Stop. Talking.

      Though in Todd’s defense, Fred had technically put the idea in his head by saying what he said about not wanting Todd to change one bit. That was hardly fair play.

      “You…wanna do that?” Fred said in surprise.

      Todd looked up to him, flashing him a smirk. “I promised you a date, didn’t I? That means the complete package. Sealed with a kiss and everything. ‘Sides, I gotta show you what this tongue can REALLY do.” Obviously, at this point, Todd had completely given up listening to reason.

      “I’d love that,” Fred replied, rather blown away at the offer.

      Right away, Todd ran into the obstacle: the height difference between Fred and himself was too great to surmount even by standing on toe. After giving it a futile attempt, he stated, “Come on, ya gotta help a guy out here.”

      What he had expected Fred to do was lean down far enough to meet Todd’s height. What actually happened was that Fred swept an arm down behind his thighs to sweep him up so that Todd was sitting on Fred’s solid arm, now positioned a head higher than Fred, feet dangling over air. Each was now sporting a quite prominent blush across his face as their eyes connected.

      Might as well.

      Todd leaned forward and down, pressing his lips to Fred’s, eyes shutting as he did so. Fred’s eyelids lowered as well, cutting out everything but the kiss. It was so much better than he’d imagined it would be, especially as he felt a lick at his lips and allowed Todd’s long, strong tongue to begin exploring his mouth.

      Maybe there was a reason Todd couldn’t shut up. Because this was nice. Very nice. More than comfortable. He could sit up here on Fred’s arm and remain lingering upon his mouth for quite a while longer. His heart was pounding, and he wasn’t sure exactly when it had sped up quite so fast. Perhaps his past considerations of Fred as a partner weren’t entirely erased. Something residual obviously remained, because here he was, running one hand over Fred’s linear blond hair and thinking about how there was probably no one better who understood them than each other –

      The full gravity of what he was doing settled in like a weight in his stomach. He was singlehandedly ruining his closest friendship over feelings he didn’t even know he still had, or ever had to this intensity, until this night. There would be ramifications to this. Expected commitments. And what about Wanda?

      Thrown into a panic, Todd shoved back from Fred, squirming off his arm and making the fall to land right on his back, limbs sprawled on the floor.

      “Todd?” Fred said in concern. “Are you okay?”

      Fred was using his first name. Not “Toad.” That didn’t bode well. “I don’t know what I’m doin’,” Todd said, flustered, as he scrambled to crouch on his hands and feet. “This ain’t – I can’t – I gotta bail!”

      He bounded out of the dining room and toward the stairs.

      “Todd, WAIT!” Fred pursued him, steps thundering on the wood floor.

      At a breakneck pace, Todd shot into his room and slammed the door behind him. He took up a position squatting in the center of his bed, practically hyperventilating.

      Fred had ascended to the second level, following to right outside Todd’s door. He raised a fist to pound on the door and begin begging for him to come out and at least talk –

      And then lowered it.

      He’d already done all he could. Probably more than he should have. It was beginning to sink in that Jean Grey, of all people, was right. You couldn’t force someone to like you. Especially not if that person was your best friend. He’d gone so far as to rope Todd into the date in the first place. From here out, it was Todd’s decision.

      Fred just hoped he hadn’t utterly destroyed the bond they had held before that night.

      From the living room, Wanda had heard everything. She had begun the night trying to read and not be an eavesdropper, but as the night progressed, she had to admit her eyes had been glazed over and focused on the same sheet of paper for the better part of an hour as she listened in on the progress of the date. The crash and burn rather surprised her; she had thought it was going well. This was a disappointment. She had been rooting for them, and not just to get Todd off her back.

      She waited for Fred to retire to his room before making a move, not wanting anyone to know she’d been listening in.

 

* * *

 

      On the drive back to the boarding house, Lance warned Pietro, “Be quiet when you go in. I don’t want everyone to know you’re back yet.”

      “I think I learned the hard way not to expect a welcoming committee,” Pietro teased.

      “Wanda still has some things to work through about you coming back,” Lance explained, “and I have to explain to everyone why I offered for you to come back in the first place. That’s gonna be a pain.”

      “Not to mention you have to tell everyone we’re a thing now,” Pietro reminded him. “I recommend we just start making out in front of them. That should drive the message home.”

      “We’re not doing that,” Lance shot down. “We have to be diplomatic about this!”

      “Diplomatic?” Pietro questioned. “In the BROTHERHOOD?”

      “Point,” Lance relented. “I still think we should keep this on the down-low for now.”

      “That’s probably smart,” Pietro admitted. “So what else? Just lock my room door so nobody goes in there?”

      “That might be the only way to do it,” Lance sighed. “Of course, a randomly locked door that should belong to an empty room would ALSO give the game away, but there aren’t really any other options.”

      “Well, I could sleep in your bed for the night,” Pietro said slyly, his tone only just light enough that Lance recognized it as a joke.

      “Yeah, that’s not happening,” Lance replied.

      They both went silent after that, allowing themselves to entertain the thought for a moment.

 

* * *

 

      “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this,” Lance whispered as he and Pietro ascended the stairs of the house. No one else was out, and all three of the remaining housemates’ bedroom doors were closed. Lance’s car clock had indicated it was past midnight, and while it wasn’t unheard of at all for one or more of the group to stay up that late, everyone seemed to have made it an early night.

      “We’ll just put up the pillow wall,” Pietro reminded him. “It’ll be fine.”

      “You are enjoying this way too much,” Lance hissed.

      “And you’re not?” Pietro replied.

      Pietro had him there. “Okay, yeah, I actually wanna do this. But we’re not doing anything, remember? Just sleeping.”

      “You don’t have to keep reminding me,” Pietro retorted. “I can behave myself. Just let me change first.”

      “Knock on my door when you’re done,” Lance told him.

      They temporarily separated to their separate rooms; Lance quickly threw off his clothes and slipped into a T-shirt he utilized for sleep, keeping his boxers on to complete the all-black ensemble. Then he sat on the bed and waited.

      The knock came softly; Lance padded to the door and eased it open, admitting Pietro to his room before swiftly and quietly shutting it. Pietro was dressed similarly to Lance, his sleepwear consisting of a tee and shorts in a lighter color palette, exposing most of his limbs. He carried the two pillows from his room beneath his arms.

      “Stay on your side,” Lance demanded.

      “Geez, I’m not gonna pull any funny business,” Pietro insisted. “I have SOME manners.”

      Lance was also in possession of two pillows; each donated one pillow to form a wall that bisected the mattress. Lance then slipped beneath the blanket on one side of the wall while Pietro settled in on the other. It made for a cramped fit, pillows and all, but it was workable.

      From here, Lance wasn’t entirely sure what to say. The best he managed was “Um…I’ll…see you in the morning.”

      “Night,” Pietro replied casually, twisting into a comfortable position and falling still. He was angled toward the wall, one arm stretched out to drape over it and intrude on Lance’s territory.

      The downside of having your boyfriend-as-of-an-hour-ago sleep in your bed, even if it was chaste, was that it didn’t really provide the optimal emotional environment to promote actual sleep. Lance sweated as he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling and replaying the events of the night in his mind. He finally had no regrets about the situation.

      Pietro’s hand was a distraction. Lance turned himself toward the wall so he could get a better view of it. It was a beautiful hand by all standards. Lance gently reached up and wrapped his own hand around it, running his thumb over each of Pietro’s fingers. On its own, you couldn’t really call Pietro’s hand delicate, but it seemed that way when contrasted with Lance’s larger, rougher hand.

      “I’m still awake, you know.”

      The murmur from the other side of the wall sent a jolt of panic and embarrassment through Lance. “I wasn’t…” He sighed. “I was just looking at your hand. That’s it.”

      “Listen, I know you’re enthralled by my beauty, but I can’t sleep if you’re holding my hand.”

      “Sorry.” Lance let his own hand fall to the mattress.

      “You’ll get to do that more tomorrow,” Pietro whispered.

      Lance couldn’t help but smile.

      After that, there was silence. Sleep finally overtook both of them, letting them peacefully coexist beside each other in the shroud of night.


	4. Basketball Courting

The right amount of money can set off a chain reaction that ends in disaster. For instance, if the right amount of money were paid to the company that made sports drink Power-8, which had been found to be toxic to mutants and undergone a recall, the CEO might be convinced to roll out a batch of the pre-recall formula for sale in certain convenience stores across New York, especially if it came with the promise that the company could claim ignorance and a factory malfunction later. It didn’t matter if the money came from people who may or may not have been associates of known ne’er-do-well Bolivar Trask. It didn’t matter if the money was exchanged with the express purpose of murdering even a few mutants. It was still money, and it was more than enough of it.

A shipment rolled out. Bottles were lined up behind the glass door of a refrigerated case.

* * *

 

Lance’s internal clock woke him up somewhere around noon, which was the norm nowadays. His memory gave him recollections of the times when, for a laugh, Pietro used to wake up five minutes earlier than everyone in the house, zoom through the other rooms, disconnect the alarm clocks, and speed off to school while presumably having a good laugh only for the rest of the Brotherhood to turn up an hour or more tardy. Now that there was no more school to worry about – expulsion still held, and Wanda had never attended in the first place – no one bothered to set any alarm clocks, leaving nothing for Pietro to sabotage.

On the thought of Pietro…

The pillow wall had held firm, though Pietro’s arm no longer dangled over it. Lance sat up to peer over it and behold Pietro sound asleep on the other side, now turned toward bed’s edge. Viewing him in this state, one might make the mistake of thinking he was an innocent boy capable of doing no wrong.

Lance wanted him awake; they had things to discuss. He reached over with the intent to grasp Pietro’s shoulder and shake him into consciousness, but retracted his arm at the last minute, instead leaning his upper body over the pillow wall and pressing a kiss to Pietro’s cheek.

Pietro made his first sign of wakefulness, a groan, or perhaps a moan, in response.

“Get up,” Lance whispered, returning to his own half of the bed.

Pietro shifted, twisted, dragged himself into consciousness and sat up. “Morning, sunshine,” he told Lance with a cheeky smile.

“Listen,” Lance said, matter-of-fact, “I have to figure out how to break it to everyone else that you’re here before you can come downstairs. Wait up here until I come get you, okay?”

“You’re the man with the plan,” Pietro agreed.

“I should be back soon.” Lance moved to leave the bed only to feel a tug at his sleeve. Pietro had grabbed onto it, reining Lance back.

“What?” Lance grunted as he turned back to Pietro in frustration.

Pietro simply pressed another kiss to Lance’s mouth. Lance really couldn’t argue with that. He was released afterward.

Making his way downstairs, Lance could hear no sounds of conversation. Obviously, he was either the first one out of bed or the last one out of bed (excepting Pietro). Everyone else had to have dispersed already. To his surprise, however, Wanda, Fred, and Todd were all seated at the dining room table, silently passing a box of chocolate cereal and a gallon of milk around.

That tipped Lance off that something was wrong. Usually, either Fred and Todd (currently seated adjacently to each other) were engaged in some sort of conversation or Todd was verbally annoying Wanda (currently sitting directly across from him) to the boiling point. All three seemed to be avoiding eye contact with each other, and Lance couldn’t think of what could have brought this on.

Unless it had something to do with what Fred had told him two nights ago.

Lance would find out later. Now, he had something else to focus on. “Hey!” he greeted, trying to sound casual as he pulled up a chair next to Wanda. Now all he had to do was figure out a natural transition to prepare the floor for serious discussion –

“I know he’s here,” Wanda said flatly.

“Wh…what?” Lance was caught off guard. “Who’s here?”

“Pietro,” Wanda answered. “He spent the night in your room. You don’t have to hide him. Just bring him down.”

“You heard us,” Lance sighed.

“No,” Wanda corrected. “Todd did.”

“Wha – “ Lance gave Todd a look of confusion. “What were you doing up?”

“What, now, we gotta curfew?” Todd snapped defensively. “I gotta report in to Officer Alvers before I go to sleep every night?” He’d been kept up thinking about matters of the heart, of course. He had been on the brink of entertaining conclusions when he’d heard the pair of whispering late arrivals from the room next door.

Lance sighed. Then, rising from his seat, he called out, “PIETRO – “

There was a rush of wind; Pietro practically appeared from nowhere in the seat next to Lance. “So let’s try this again,” Pietro stated. “This time, nobody kicks me out of the house.”

“You have as much claim to it as we do,” Wanda stated, her tone indecipherable.

“Great,” Pietro said as he began loading up a bowl with cereal. “Now we can pick up where we left off.”

“Good to have you back,” Fred remarked.

“Yeah,” Todd agreed. “Things were gettin’ a little too predictable around here without ya.”

Pietro made a grab for a bottle Wanda hadn’t noticed was on the table. She was still conflicted as to whether living in the same house as Pietro would be good or bad for her mental health. However, such thoughts were immediately jammed by her observation that Pietro was pouring chocolate syrup, the type usually reserved for ice cream sundaes, into his cereal bowl. And the placement of that bottle indicated it was there daily. “Are you pouring chocolate syrup on chocolate cereal?” she asked in disbelief, though that was clearly what Pietro was doing.

Pietro gave the bowl a few quick spins with his spoon, his speed giving it the effect of a whisk that mixed the syrup in with the puffs. “It’s not like there’s anyone around to tell us no,” he replied.

So the bottle was a regular staple of Brotherhood breakfast. Wanda just hadn’t noticed because she ate with the group so little.

“You should try it,” Pietro encouraged.

Wanda hesitated; the practice went against all knowledge of what was healthy. However, it occurred to her that she could use a little more enjoyment of the small things in her life. She could splurge for chocolate syrup on chocolate cereal for just one morning. So she said “I think I will” and reached for the bottle telekinetically.

In the time it had taken her to decide, however, Todd had declared, “Well, if YOU don’t want it, I’LL take it,” and flicked his tongue toward the syrup.

That was how the bottle ended up suspended between the two of them, Todd’s tongue wrapped around it and pulling it toward his side of the table while Wanda retaliated by drawing her energy toward her side, and neither wanted to relinquish.

Wanda expected Todd to just give up the fight. After all, he usually did in such cases in an attempt to win her affections. However, after the shift in perspective caused by the previous night, Todd had spent hours coming to terms with the fact that he now had feelings for two people (or had harbored them for a while), and he wasn’t sure which one really was going to win out. As a result, Wanda was no longer standing on a shining pedestal. She had become a little more ordinary. There was suddenly less reason to simply give up such a valuable conquest as the chocolate syrup bottle to her. So Todd persisted, refusing to lose.

Wanda got over her confusion about his resistance quickly. “Let it go,” she demanded.

“No,” Todd retorted. “You firtht!”

“I was offered it first!” Wanda growled.

“And you hethitated!” Todd reminded her. “You know, you are really putting a thtrain on thith relathionthip right now!”

“Good,” Wanda said with a smirk. She knew how physics worked to her advantage. She made her telekinetic pull stronger; Todd responded by pulling back with more force. Then, all at once, Wanda dropped her hold on the bottle entirely.

The energy Todd had put into hauling the bottle his direction backfired all at once; his tongue snapped back, and the bottle whacked him in the forehead. This, in turn, caused him to lose his balance completely, which toppled the chair over backward; he gave a yelp as he hit the ground.

As Fred gasped “TODD!” and looked down to make sure he was all right, Wanda located the syrup bottle, which had been dropped on the floor in the spill, and lifted it with her power, floating it over to her side of the table and victoriously pouring it over her cereal before giving the whole thing a mix with her spoon. It tasted too sweet, too indulgent: perfect.

“Nice job, Sis!” Pietro congratulated, giving Wanda light applause.

“I’m fine…” Todd muttered as he righted his chair and took his position atop it.

“Unfortunately,” Wanda said clearly as she spooned another bite into her mouth.

“BURN!” Pietro jeered, and Lance couldn’t help but smile with amusement.

Todd folded his arms indignantly. “You know, it’s not like you’re the only one in the running for me anymore,” he informed her. “You got competition.” He hadn’t expected to bring up the topic over a chocolate syrup war, but here we were.

“Do I now?” Wanda raised an eyebrow smugly.

“She DOES?” Fred reiterated, heart fluttering.

“Yeah,” Todd stated. “Me an’ Freddie had a bit of a talk last night, and it could end up bein’ him.” He turned to look up to Fred, saying with much less confidence, “It, uh, it could be you now.”

“You mean it?” Fred replied. Then: “What do you mean ‘could’ be?”

“I don’t know yet, okay?” Todd groaned. “I’m still working it out!”

“Want my advice?” Wanda offered. Without waiting for a response, she said, “He wants you. I don’t. That should make up your mind.”

“Oh, no, they don’t,” Pietro muttered.

“What’s wrong?” Lance asked.

“They’re going to snipe all the attention as being the first couple to get together!” Pietro complained. “We’re gonna be second place!”

“Todd just said he hadn’t made up his mind yet!” Lance groaned.

“Don’t care,” Pietro insisted. “We are NOT going to be the beta couple to THEM.”

With that, he grasped Lance’s shoulders, pulling him in for a deep, long kiss to prove a point. While Lance was less than thrilled about the competitive reasoning behind it, he still accepted the kiss gladly.

In fact, he momentarily forgot he was sitting at a dining room table with three other people who weren’t Pietro. When his lips disconnected from Pietro’s, he looked back and was immediately aware of those three people staring at him with utterly gobsmacked expressions.

“So, uh…Pietro and I are a thing now,” he said by way of explanation.

Pietro threw an arm around Lance, pulling him in close. “He’s all mine,” he warned, “so back off.”

The others at the table remained silently stunned until Todd groaned, “TELL me you ain’t gonna be doin’ things in that bed that’ll keep me up all night!”

“It’s not like that,” Lance said swiftly.

“Yet,” Pietro added.

Lance had been thinking the same sentiment, but was it really necessary for Pietro to say it out loud?

“That’s a mental image I don’t need,” Wanda huffed.

“You guys always did have a kind of chemistry,” Fred pointed out. “I thought it was suspicious how Lance would always get so mad when Pietro was gone. Especially the time he threw me out the window over it.”

“You threw Fred out of a WINDOW over me?” Pietro asked, stunned.

“I threw YOUR STUFF out the window!” Lance argued. “Fred was in the way!”

“And this’d sure explain why Pietro is always pickin’ on Lance,” Todd contributed. “That HAD to be a cry for attention.”

“And it’s fun,” Pietro clarified.

“It’s really not a big deal,” Lance sighed.

“Oh, I think it’s a big deal all right,” Todd said with a smirk. “Now that we got Lance and Pietro, sittin’ in a tree – “

“This rhyme is for five-year-olds – “ Lance tried to interrupt.

That wasn’t enough to stop Todd and Fred’s chorus of “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

“See what you did, Pietro?” Lance groaned. “We’re never going to hear the end of this.”

“Good,” Pietro said with a shrug. He then reached for the milk jug on the table, uncapping it and taking a swig directly out of it.

“Gross,” Wanda commented. “Use a glass. Other people use that.”

“Other people don’t mind,” Pietro argued.

To prove the point, Lance pulled the gallon over to himself and took a drink himself.

“You two just proved you already swap spit,” Wanda pointed out. “No one else is going to want – “

“Ay, Lance,” Todd ordered. “Pass that over here. Now I’m thirsty.”

“Sure thing,” Lance said with a smile as he shoved the gallon across the table.

Todd proceeded to drink directly out of the jug himself; Wanda cringed. She began, “That’s not – “

As soon as Todd slammed down the jug, Fred declared “My turn” and put it to his own lips.

“How long have all four of you been drinking directly out of the jug?” Wanda asked, horror sprouting in her gut.

Lance shrugged. “I dunno. There’s never been a rule about it as long as the Brotherhood’s been around.”

Wanda looked down at her cereal, realizing just how much of a cesspool of saliva it was floating in. “Suddenly I’m not hungry,” she declared, getting up to take the bowl to the sink. “Next time we pick up food, I get my own milk.”

“That’s fair,” Lance consented.

Wanda scraped out the bowl, rinsed it, and left it in the stack of dirty dishes that she knew she would eventually be washing later so as not to have to eat ramen noodles out of a coffee mug. On her way out of the kitchen, she said offhandedly, “By the way, the peanut butter does taste better cold.”

“I TOLD you!” Fred cheered, pointing to the others at the table. “I told ALL of you!”

Wanda settled in her bedroom with her book, leaving the door open just a crack so she could hear the edges of conversation from below – unable to make out the specific words being said but comforted by the background noise.

Some time later, she was alerted to a soft knock on the door to her room. She could only think of one person in the house who was polite enough to knock, so when she looked up to see Lance, she wasn’t surprised. “Hey,” Lance greeted.

“Hi,” Wanda replied, a little awkwardly, since she didn’t know the reason for this visit. “You can come in if you want.”

“Sure.” Lance sauntered into the room, casting his gaze about. “Wow. It’s the one room in the house that’s actually clean.” His eyes settled on the bookshelf. “You really don’t have many books, do you?”

“No,” Wanda admitted, “but they’re all favorites I won’t get tired of.”

“You should still get some new ones,” Lance suggested. “We could lift some for you when we go out for food. Just leave a list of the kind of stuff you like to read.”

“Or I could get a library card,” Wanda offered. “Free books so long as I’m careful about late fees.”

“Got me there.” Lance faced her. “I just wanted to say I’m glad you’re doing better.”

Wanda wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

“It’s obvious,” Lance went on. “I’ve never seen you put chocolate on your cereal before. Or hit Todd in the face with it. Or smile like that.”

She was smiling again as he spoke. “I guess I’m getting used to it here. You don’t make bad roommates.”

“Two of us, anyway,” Lance recalled. “Listen, I know you still have mixed feelings about Pietro, but I found him sleeping on a park bench, and he wanted to come home. I couldn’t just leave him.”

“It’s obvious you care about him,” Wanda pointed out. “I don’t blame you. I don’t want him sleeping in the park either. Just don’t think too hard about it. I’ll deal with Pietro on my own. I’ll figure something out. You did the right thing, Lance.”

“Thank you,” Lance replied.

“I might just get to the point where all four of you make good roommates yet,” Wanda informed him.

“Even Toad?” Lance joked.

“It’s more complicated than you think about him,” Wanda replied.

“No,” Lance said as he shook his head. “Oh, no. Please tell me you’re not into him too.”

“Ugh,” Wanda responded. “No. Fred can HAVE him. It’s a different kind of complicated. You remember when Pyro went after me, so I followed him to find my father?”

“Yeah, sorta,” Lance replied. “Toad followed YOU, right?”

“He did,” Wanda affirmed. “And he risked a lot to make sure I made it out of there. Nightcrawler explained it to me. It made me think that if he could just be less gross about wanting to get with me, he might actually be a good friend. I kind of hoped that would be how it turned out one day.”

“Well, maybe,” Lance said with a shrug. “I mean, it’s Toad. Who knows what he’ll do?”

“Though if I know him,” Wanda groaned, “he’s listening to us right now.”

“You think?”

“He’s ALWAYS listening in whenever he isn’t supposed to be,” Wanda said flatly. Then, toward the door, “Just come out where we can see you.”

Someone did step into the door frame, in full visibility, revealing that he had been listening. But it wasn’t Todd.

“You know, I’m actually insulted,” Pietro commented.

“PIETRO!” Lance flinched. “How long were you there?”

“Since right after you stepped in,” Pietro answered.

Lance faced Wanda in a panic. “I did NOT know he was there – “

“I know,” Wanda said calmly. Then, to Pietro, “Why were you listening?”

“Because I wanna talk,” Pietro stated. “You and me. Alone.”

“We have to,” Wanda agreed.

“I should just go,” Lance stated as he edged toward the door. No one objected, and Pietro stepped aside to let him pass.

Once Lance was out of the way, Pietro stepped inside Wanda’s room. “So we have some baggage to unpack,” he began.

Wanda nodded. “We do.”

Uninvited, Pietro sat on the edge of the foot of the bed. “I wanna stay here. But it sounds like you might have a problem with that.”

“It’s complicated,” Wanda replied.

“A lot of things are complicated with you, huh?”

“My life has never been simple, Pietro. You should know that by now.”

“The thing is,” Pietro went on, “I want you to stay here too.”

“Why?” Wanda asked.

“Because it’s good for you,” Pietro told her. “You actually smiled today.”

“I’m surprised you care,” Wanda huffed.

“Look,” Pietro sighed, “you’re all I have left for my actual blood family, okay? It was always between you and Dad. I always had to pick one or the other. And I picked the wrong one.”

“You used me to get back at the X-Men after our father was gone,” Wanda reminded him. “Or after we thought he was gone, anyway.”

“Yeah, I did,” Pietro admitted. “I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t. I tried explaining that one to Lance, but there’s really no way to make that one sound good. It’s not gonna happen again, though.”

“It better not,” Wanda warned. “I am NOT one of your pawns.”

“I don’t want to HAVE pawns anymore!” Pietro said exasperatedly. “I want a family! I want a sister, a boyfriend, and two annoying roommates! Lance said the whole Brotherhood was a family, and he was right. This is seriously where I belong now. I’m probably not going to be the good brother you wanted, but could you at least put up with having a bad one who promises not to lie to you again?”

“I want you in my life,” Wanda said plainly. “I’ve always wanted you in my life. But ever since I joined the Brotherhood, you’ve been selfish. You never even tried – “

“Okay, THAT’S not true,” Pietro said defensively. “I’ll admit I’ve been a bad brother, but I’ve tried plenty of times. You don’t listen when I do. You just go off and sulk in your own corner. I keep trying to get you to understand that you don’t have to be tied down by Dad or your messed-up past, but you don’t care.”

Flashes came back to her: Pietro on the subway that fateful day, trying to convince her that she was better off without Magneto, but that had been the very catalyst for the accident. Pietro, later on, insisting the accident wasn’t her fault. It always came crashing down when she recalled that immediately after that, he lied to her to advance his own gain. But maybe it was time to think about the big picture. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “You do try.”

“Apparently not hard enough.”

“No,” she agreed, “not hard enough. Sometimes. But other times, it really is me who won’t listen.” She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Real brothers and sisters – “

“We ARE a real brother and sister.”

“NORMAL brothers and sisters,” Wanda corrected, “don’t get along. They fight over stupid things every day. Are we just how we’re supposed to be? And it just seems worse than it is because of who our father is and what he got involved in?”

“Maybe,” Pietro answered with a shrug. “I just want you to give me another chance.”

“Do you just want me to give you another chance?” Wanda asked. “Is that it?”

He realized what she was getting at. “No,” he said. “That’s not it. I also want to give YOU another chance. Because, look, even if you and I can’t work out, you’re doing great here, and you should be happy, okay?”

They were the words she’d always wanted to hear. “We’ll try again,” she said softly. “You and me.”

“Maybe it’ll actually work this time,” Pietro suggested.

His guard was down in a way Wanda hadn’t anticipated. It was always difficult to know when to take Pietro seriously. She worried that this time, like he’d done in the past when Magneto was involved, he was putting up an act. But what did he have to stand to gain this time? She had seen Magneto walk out on him the same day he had walked out on her. This time, she truly felt a sincerity coming from Pietro, and she resolved to put her trust in him. “Maybe it will,” she agreed. But there was one more issue on the table, one she knew Pietro had the answer to. The one she had been hesitant to ask about for so long. “Pietro, I want to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“What really happened to me?” She drew her knees up to her chest, setting the book aside to wrap her arms around them. “The more I go over my memories, the more I know they aren’t right. You’re not even there for half the times you should be. You were right. My mind was played with. The things I remember about our father aren’t real. I want you to tell me what he did.”

“You’re not gonna blow up this time?” Pietro asked in suspicion.

“I need to hear the truth,” Wanda asserted.

“He put you in an institution when we were kids,” Pietro answered plainly. “He couldn’t handle your powers, so he had you locked up. I don’t know what happened to you from then until the Brotherhood, but it wasn’t good. You were MAD when you got out.”

He let that sink in. For a moment, he was afraid Wanda would lash out, and he braced himself for impact. However, she simply said, “That makes more sense. And it sounds like what he would do. Thank you for telling me the truth.” She reached for the dropped book. “I think I want to be alone now.”

“No sweat.” In a blink, Pietro was off the bed and out the door. He left it in the same condition in which Lance had found it: open just a crack. Wanda appreciated that.

* * *

 

“I’m just saying both theme songs are valid,” Fred argued as he and Lance sat before the television.

“Oh, they’re both VALID,” Lance agreed, “but the second one is better. These are actual facts.”

“Okay, you wanna know what?” Fred insisted. “You’re wrong. The first one is SO much better.”

“Wow. I can’t believe I finally confirmed you have no taste.”

Pietro sped up to the couch, a cold aluminum can in hand. “Hey, Lance.”

“Hey,” Lance responded.

“Just thought maybe you deserved a little something,” Pietro told him, passing him the soda. “You’re welcome.”

Lance blinked, surprised, at the can. “Thank you. This is…strangely nice of you.”

“Yeah, it is,” Pietro replied, “isn’t it?” With that, he sped away.

That had been odd. Lance brushed it off, clicking the tab of the can.

It didn’t occur to him that before the can had made its way to his hands, Pietro might have shaken it at top speed. As the tab pierced, however, it became clear that was exactly what had happened. Soda exploded out of the can and drenched Lance.

“PIETRO!” Lance roared, hearing the light tittering come from somewhere in one of the adjacent rooms. He leapt to his feet, shaking off the droplets to get to a state of mildly damp before beginning a futile chase. “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!”

He really had missed this, he realized. It just wasn’t life at the Brotherhood without Pietro pushing his buttons.

Fred didn’t get up. He figured this qualified as a lovers’ quarrel, and Lance and Pietro should be left to resolve it alone. His concentration remained on the television even as he felt the house’s foundations shake a couple times.

Eventually, Todd crept into the living room, where he knew he would catch Fred alone. Now he’d had even more time to think, and he’d come, at last, to a conclusion. It was as Wanda had spelled out. If his heart was torn between two, it was only logical to pursue the one who actually wanted half. Wanda was a pipe dream: unattainable. On the other hand, while it seemed like the downside of initiating a relationship with your best friend was the potential of wrecking what you had, the absolute upside was that you would be with someone who you understood, and who understood you in turn, and that was something Wanda could never offer.

So, confident in his decision, Todd hopped onto the couch beside Fred, greeting him with “Hello, gorgeous.”

That caught Fred completely off guard, bringing bright red to his face as he turned to look at Todd, who was flashing him the most confident smile. If there was one nickname no one had ever given Fred, it was “gorgeous.” Granted, Todd was probably just teasing, but it still bowled Fred completely over. “Hi. Uh…what’s going on?”

It hadn’t been as much of a teasing name as Fred thought. Todd was aware Fred didn’t have a body that was generally considered attractive by your average joe, but Todd found an allure nonetheless. It was the “more to love” principle, and as he’d felt for himself, Fred’s overall solidness was comforting. Besides, it wasn’t as though Todd had delusions about his own appearance. That many delusions, anyway. The point was, he actually did find Fred rather gorgeous. “Been givin’ this whole situation with you’n’me a good think-over,” he explained, “and I think you’re gonna like what I came up with.”

“Oh yeah?” Fred asked, almost challengingly.

“I’m gonna give us a shot,” Todd stated. “I mean, we already go together great, right? So what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Well, we break up and never speak to each other again,” Fred said plainly.

“Like that’s gonna happen,” Todd said dismissively. “You ain’t gettin’ rid of me, Freddie.”

“You called me that this morning, too,” Fred realized.

“An’ you’ve been callin’ me ‘Todd’ for two days straight,” Todd replied. “Turnabout’s fair play, right? So, you still in?”

“Yeah, I’m still in,” Fred confirmed.

“Then we’re official now,” Todd resolved. “No take-backs.”

“No take-backs!” Fred couldn’t imagine how he could have been happier.

With that, Todd linked his arm through Fred’s, snuggling right up next to him on the couch. This already felt natural. “So what’re we watchin’?”

Discussion turned to that of finding something interesting on the television, which took a good deal of channel-flicking, but eventually an action film both had seen before and wouldn’t mind seeing again turned up, and the pair settled back, making commentary at every scene. As time passed, Fred’s arm ended up not linked with Todd’s but flung around his shoulders to keep Todd close; Todd was pretty much leaning on Fred more than the couch, which was quite a favorable position. Todd’s arm in turn traveled the breadth of Fred’s back, but slid across it restlessly, somewhat hungrily, rather than settling in one place.

Wanda observed them as she passed by the living room on her way to get the last of the non-rotten apples (which still sported a significant bruise, but she could eat around that). As she saw the pair wrapped up with each other, laughing at a dated special effect and the impracticality of a stunt sequence, she smiled to herself, glad they’d worked out after all.

* * *

 

The Jeep pulled out of the driveway that night with Lance once again in the driver’s seat and Pietro riding shotgun as had become usual. The primary goal, for once, was not to commit a crime, though that didn’t mean crime was off-limits for the night. Instead, a challenge had been put forth. Pietro had reminded Lance of how he had once been on the basketball team, playing against Evan “Spyke” Daniels, no less, and how he had been relegated to performing without using his speed for the most part, as the viewing audience would have noticed him zipping about the court and practically disappearing. Lance had then called into question whether Pietro was a skilled enough player to best Lance without using his power, and Pietro had insisted he could trounce Lance at basketball any day of the week, or night, as it were. So they set out with a basketball rolling around the floor of the back seat.

“I’m already hungry,” Pietro complained before the car had gotten out of the neighborhood.

“We JUST ate dinner,” Lance reminded him, amused.

“You should KNOW I have a fast metabolism,” Pietro replied.

“Fine,” Lance resolved. “We’ll make a stop.”

It was a good thing crime was on the table.

They entered a deserted convenience store, one at a time with an interval in between so it didn’t appear they were together. The cashier seemed utterly bored, too much so to pay attention to his patrons. All the same, Lance knew how to play the game.

He approached the counter, setting down a single small bag of pretzels and placing a crumpled dollar bill next to it. “Just this.”

The cashier rang up the purchase without a word. Lance was well aware that behind him, Pietro had kicked into overdrive, gathering what he wanted and zooming out the door before the cashier could process that there were supposed to be two people in the store who hadn’t paid, not one. His focus was on Lance anyhow. Lance was given one penny and told to have a good night in a tone that sounded less than sincere.

Lance strolled out of the store with his bag of pretzels in hand and ten candy bars tucked in the inner pockets of his vest. He had always favored that vest for that exact reason.

As he settled back into the driver’s seat, he plucked one of the bars from its hiding place – a particularly flavorful concoction of chocolate, peanuts, and caramel – and held it out before Pietro. “Here.”

“What, you got this for me?” Pietro asked smugly.

“Well, I don’t know what one’s your favorite,” Lance admitted, “so no, I didn’t steal it specifically for you, but I got enough for you to have a bunch.”

Pietro accepted the candy bar as Lance started up the car and got it out of dodge. “Not a bad pick, Lance,” Pietro commented as he bit off literally half the bar. “I’m more of a peanut butter cup guy, but not a bad pick.”

Another packet was thrown at Pietro one-handed; Pietro fumbled it before it settled in his hands. “You’re lucky I picked those up too,” Lance said proudly.

The jeep parked near an empty basketball court. As Lance and Pietro disembarked, the latter retrieved the ball. “You ready for me to whip your butt?” Pietro challenged, tossing the ball up and down.

Lance draped his candy-stuffed vest over the edge of the car door. “No, because that’s not gonna happen.”

They had no method of keeping time; they just tallied up the shots they made. Pietro stood by his word, keeping to speeds most would consider natural. He was at first frustrated by Lance’s superior height and musculature, but he soon gained his ground, bolstered by his experience with the sport as compared to Lance’s novice status. It was a close game; for every basket Lance dunked, Pietro sank one from half-court.

It was Lance who caved, dripping with sweat and panting roughly. “I’m done,” he announced, passing the ball to Pietro. It had taken him more time than it should have to admit when he’d gotten exhausted

“Really?” Pietro retorted. “I could go another two hours.” It was true; with his speed came endurance. If he hadn’t been able to last hours’ worth of normal physical activity without breaking a sweat, there was no way he would have been able to put up with running as fast as he did as often as he did. All the same, endurance wasn’t the name of the game. It was whoever could sink the most baskets by the time they called it quits. And Lance had one basket’s advantage on Pietro.

“Looks like I win this round,” Lance announced proudly, though in a voice that was still lacking breath.

“You got lucky,” Pietro told him, giving him a playful nudge on the shoulder and feeling for himself how much of Lance’s sweat came away on his palm. It was simultaneously disgusting and sensual. “We do this again, I’ll wipe the court with you.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

They retired to the car, which was parked beneath a street light. Pietro fished around in the back seat for the prizes from his convenience store haul, retrieving two plastic bottles and passing one to Lance. As Pietro uncapped his own, Lance told him, “I thought you weren’t tired.”

“I don’t have to be tired to be thirsty,” Pietro replied. “You know, you look good all sweaty.”

“I’m glad,” Lance replied, “because this took effort.”

Was this the first night since Pietro’s return that Lance hadn’t been angry with him at some point? Not counting the soda bomb incident from earlier. It seemed to mark a new era: one in which Lance found himself intrinsically connected to Pietro on a level he never had been before. He watched Pietro down the drink he held in one continuous chug, almost forgetting about his own thirst and the bottle in his hands. He turned his attention to twisting the plastic cap.

Pietro was similarly pleased with the night’s turnout. As usual, he would have had a hard time admitting it even under brutal torture, but he was glad to have found a place with Lance. With the Brotherhood in general, to be frank. It seemed he’d finally filled a void. His relationship with Wanda was finally in a good place, he had Todd and Fred around to hang out with, and Lance meant so much to him. Everything was going his way; he felt on top of the world, emotionally speaking.

Exactly when he realized that, his physical body began to break down.

His heart was beating faster than it should have, and he realized it wasn’t because of Lance or the game. His mouth went dry as he gasped for air; the plastic bottle slipped from his hand and hit the pavement. It felt as if iron bands were seizing his chest. Chills crawled over his skin, and his stomach heaved. He couldn’t pin down exactly when he had gone from leaning against the car to kneeling on the pavement, and then from there to his hands and knees.

“Pietro?” Lance cried. “PIETRO! Are you okay?”

Horror swept over him as he recalled the bottle, the double of which sat untouched in Lance’s hand. He tightened the cap once more, examining the label. Power-8. The stuff that had been recalled for toxicity to mutants. That had been a while ago, and Pietro had probably taken it figuring it had been produced with a safer formula, or perhaps Pietro hadn’t even heard about the controversy surrounding the drink. Though Lance had no idea of the bribery and foul play it had taken to get the bottles stocked up – a scandal that would publicly blow two weeks later thanks to the X-Men – he already knew this substance had been the culprit. He hurled the bottle as far away from himself as he could before dropping to his knees beside Pietro.

Pietro was visibly quaking then, wobbling on his limbs, his consciousness bleary. He tried to move his tongue and lips to respond to Lance, but they wouldn’t obey.

“Hang on, Pietro,” Lance said, his voice breaking. He lay a hand gently on Pietro’s back. “I’m gonna get you help – “

Pietro completely collapsed, sprawling out over the pavement on his stomach. The faintest beginning of a groan sounded weakly from the back of his throat.

“No, no, no…” Wide-eyed with panic, surging with adrenaline, Lance turned Pietro over onto his back before scooping him up into his arms. Pietro wasn’t quite as light as he looked to be, but Lance could still handle supporting the weight. He carried the poison victim to the front passenger seat of the car, propping him up there and using the seatbelt to harness him in place.

It felt for a moment as though Lance were the one with super speed as he shot into the driver’s seat, throwing the car into gear and tearing out onto the road with no mind to the speed limit.

This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t lose Pietro now.

* * *

 

Todd had been the first to fall asleep, snuggling against Fred like he was propped up by a well-worn mattress. Fred had idly stroked Todd’s greasy hair for a while as he carried on with the television, not noticing his own eyelids dropping until it was too late. Wanda passed by again to throw out the apple core, smiling at the sight of the pair asleep by each other; she might go so far as to call it cute.

The door slammed open. Lance burst inside. Wanda, startled, fumbled the apple core; Todd and Fred were both jolted out of sleep. They only needed a cursory look at Lance, wide eyes and frantic breathing, to know something was wrong. Within a moment, he confirmed it:

“Help me. I need help. I think Pietro’s dying.”


	5. Emergency Room

The five had been left with no choice but to rush Pietro to the hospital. Pietro remained in the front passenger seat of the Jeep; Lance fussed over him at first, worrying that he’d already passed in the time it had taken him to get home, but Pietro was still making weak noises, perhaps attempts at words, and twitching slightly, proving that he was holding on. Now he actually had broken a sweat.

Lance was the driver; there were no arguments over this. Fred, Todd, and Wanda were crammed in the back seat, in that order from left to right. They sped onward to the hospital in that arrangement.

“Just hang on, Pietro,” Lance said softly.

“Pietro?” Wanda attempted from the back seat. “Pietro, say something to me! Please!”

The only sign that Pietro might have been at all aware of her cry was a light shift in position in his seat.

“He’s gonna be all right, right?” Todd babbled. “Tell me he’s gonna be all right. He’s not gonna die. He can’t die. We only just got him back, and he’s gonna die? He’s gonna die, isn’t he? He’s gonna die!”

“He’ll be okay,” Fred tried to reassure. “He has to be.”

Lance laid on the horn to warn the traffic in front of him to speed up. He was kicking himself internally; bringing Pietro back to the house had been his first instinct one it was apparent that something was wrong. He should have gone to the hospital alone and called the others from there. The trip back to the boarding house had wasted valuable time.

All the same, Lance was glad to have the other three behind him, even if Todd’s panicking was bringing his worst fears into the audible plane. Even the short drive home, with only Pietro’s twitching body for company, had filled Lance with dread. Pietro was there without really being there, leaving Lance alone with terror by his side. At least now he wasn’t alone.

The Jeep sped into the emergency room drive-through, and Lance was first to sprint out of the driver’s seat, parking the car without shutting it down so he could barrel through the sliding doors. It took him a brief moment of disorientation to locate the desk. He hurried up to it, saying frantically, “My name is Lance Alvers. My boyfriend is dying.”

He had never hated saying any words as much as he hated saying that.

The receptionist recognized the name “Lance Alvers” from somewhere, but she couldn’t place it; in fact, what she was subconsciously remembering was the news coverage of the Brotherhood playing hero to the rash of accidents they had caused throughout Bayville. She shook it off, though, thinking it was a coincidence. “Tell me what happened,” she said calmly.

That was when Fred entered the lobby, carrying Pietro with no effort spent on holding his body aloft. Wanda kept pace at his left, eyes on Pietro’s lolling head. Todd scampered in on all fours to Fred’s right.

Now the receptionist recognized them. Seeing all five at once clicked it. She knew she had to focus on the job at hand without making any judgments. “What is the patient’s name?” She knew she’d heard it in the broadcasts, but it was escaping her.

“Maximoff,” Lance answered. “Pietro Maximoff.”

She entered that into her computer. “What happened to him?”

The question Lance had already failed to answer the first time, and time was ticking. “He was poisoned,” he explained, mentally bidding her hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.

Her fingers flew over the keys. “Any conditions such as diabetes, food allergies, heart conditions, et cetera?”

Lance was at a loss. Thankfully, that was where Wanda could step in.

“No,” she said. “None of that. He’s a perfectly healthy person outside of the poisoning.”

“I just have one more question,” the receptionist said. “Is he a mutant?”

No one wanted to answer. This was a loaded question under any circumstance. Anti-mutant sentiment still ran high throughout the nation. Admitting what Pietro was might just get him denied the care he needed, and needed now.

“We need to know,” the receptionist stressed. “It will affect how we medicate him, and this could change the nature of the poisoning.”

Right. It was scientific. Of course medical professionals would need to know, though Lance doubted they knew all the ins and outs of treating mutants. He still didn’t want to hand the information over, worrying that it would doom Pietro at the hands of some bigot in the system, but knowing it was a necessary gate to pass through, he finally said, “Yes. Pietro’s a mutant. Please, he doesn’t have much time – “

“We’ll get him to triage,” the receptionist assured.

Pietro was loaded up onto a gurney and wheeled into the bowels of the hospital. “Does Pietro have any family we can contact?” the receptionist asked once he was carried away.

“Just me,” Wanda answered. “I’m his twin sister.”

“What about us, huh?” Todd broke in. “Ain’t we the closest thing he got?”

“We ARE the closest thing Pietro has to family,” Lance agreed. “Let us go with him. He needs someone to be with him! He needs US!” He didn’t know if those who didn’t share a blood connection to Pietro would be allowed. If that was the case, he was ready to start a quake and not let it up until the Brotherhood was admitted after Pietro.

He turned out not to need to start trouble. “Go on ahead after him,” the receptionist stated. “Just be – “

The quartet didn’t stay to heed her warning. They took off after Pietro’s gurney.

The next hours were filled with anxiety and pounding hearts. Lance, Wanda, Todd, and Fred watched nervously as Pietro was stuffed with a plastic tube that kept him breathing steadily. His blood was drawn and carted off for analysis; he was fed a substance that the other four were informed was activated charcoal. At last, tests were finished and treatments were applied.

“It looks like a similar substance to the recalled Power-8,” a nurse said at some point.

“Yes,” Lance confirmed, out of breath. “Yes, that’s exactly what it was. He drank a whole bottle.”

“But it was recalled,” the nurse stated. “It shouldn’t be toxic to mutants anymore.”

“WELL, IT WAS!” Lance yelled; the floor shook slightly.

A heavy hand rested on his shoulder; from behind, Fred simply said, “Lance…”

That meant Lance had to calm down. “Can you do anything for him?” Lance asked. “Do you know how to treat this?”

“We’re doing our best,” the nurse replied.

To Lance, that said the medical staff barely had the ghost of an idea of how to treat a mutant poisoned with Power-8. He nearly set off another quake, ready to let loose about hospital incompetence, but he knew that would have disrupted the delicate medical instrumentation that had already been set in and around Pietro. Come to think of it, a quake would be disastrous for everyone else in the wing who was already suffering, and while Fred and Todd might be able to live with that, Lance couldn’t, and he doubted Wanda would want it either.

Pietro ended up transferred to a room within the hospital, where he lay unconscious in a bed with stark white sheets that complemented his hair. “We’ve done all we can for him,” one of the nurses explained to the waiting Brotherhood. “We’ll keep an eye on him until he wakes up.”

“And he’s gonna wake up, right?” Todd asked frantically.

“He should be fine from here,” the nurse said. “We’ve managed to flush a lot from his system.”

But how could you know that, Lance wondered, if you didn’t know about mutant physiology? He had a strong suspicion he was being told positive affirmations in order to lower panic among the group. Then again, Pietro did look to be in better condition than he had been, even if he was still unconscious. His body lay still rather than twitching and tossing; he was no longer making noise, and his breathing was even, his chest and stomach rising and falling in a rhythm.

“I’ll give you a minute alone with him,” the nurse announced, leaving the room.

Lance stepped closer to the bed; the others, well aware of his relationship to Pietro, let him take the first stand. He took Pietro’s hand into his own – thinking back to the night of the pillow wall – running his thumb over those comparatively slender fingers. “You idiot,” he said softly. “You jerk. You think it’s okay to leave me again? Like THIS? We just got everything figured out. You are NOT allowed to do this. If you die, I won’t forgive you.”

His eyes had gone misty. He gave Pietro’s hand a squeeze before rapidly blinking away the tears – he knew his friends were in no position to make fun of him for crying, and they were probably on the verge themselves, but you still didn’t cry in the Brotherhood – and facing the others.

All three gazes were planted on the floor. Wanda hugged herself, hands seized around her upper arms. Fred and Todd clasped each other’s hand for comfort. How far we’ve come, Lance thought. In the beginning, they were loose allies. Neither Rogue nor Tabby had been important enough to chase after. Magneto had brought Lance, Pietro, and Fred to his asteroid in the beginning and snubbed Todd based on a battle loss, and the three accepted had thought nothing of leaving him behind. Lance wasn’t sure exactly when things had changed so much that the quintet now couldn’t entertain the thought of abandoning one of their own. But the sentiment was clear in the room. Lance wondered, if it had been any of the others besides Pietro, if the other four would show up to wait at that person’s side. He obviously had a bias toward Pietro, but he knew he would be right there for any of the other three, no hesitation. Maybe the others didn’t share the sentiment, but it was strong with Lance.

“Wanda,” he said softly, “I know you want to say something to him.”

Wanda looked up, giving Lance the slightest of nods. They traded places solemnly, Wanda taking her place at Pietro’s side.

Lance had thought you didn’t cry in the Brotherhood. Wanda seemed to be the exception to this rule. She wept openly as she begged, “Please don’t die. We just found each other, and we just figured out how to make it work. I don’t care if you’re a bad brother. I just don’t want to lose you now.”

Fred felt the light pressure of Todd hopping up onto his shoulders for the purpose of quiet communication. “I know he was trouble,” Todd whispered, “but I didn’t want nothin’ like this.”

“He’ll be fine,” Fred said quietly, because he had to. He had to be the one sure that things would turn out all right. No one else had hope. Fred had his own doubts, but there needed to be at least one person who either believed the best or pretended to.

Wanda wiped away her tears, clearing her throat as she turned back to the others. “If he makes it – “

“He WILL,” Fred said, louder now, so everyone could hear it.

“When he makes it,” Wanda corrected, “we’ll have to figure out how to pay for this.”

That brought a whole new level of severity to the room. The thought that any of the Brotherhood possessed health insurance was laughable. Even if Pietro did, that would still leave a sizeable cost to process. The consequences of being hit with such a bill would be disastrous.

It took a moment, but Lance eventually said, “I think I have a way around this.”

“Oh yeah?” Todd replied.

“But we can’t talk about it here,” Lance stated cryptically. “Outside. And we might not be coming back for a while.”

As they departed the hospital, Wanda paused by the reception desk to give her number over to the receptionist in order to receive calls. From there, they went all the way out to Lance’s car, which was steered out onto the road; Wanda now had the honor of the front passenger seat, leaving more room in the back for Fred and Todd. Lance joined traffic as he explained his plan.

“Look, we’re already known criminals,” he stated. “We’re going to need thousands of dollars we don’t have. It’s time we hit the big leagues.” Despite everything, his proposal brought a smile to his face. It really was a good thing he’d severed ties with Kitty; she wouldn’t abide this. “I’m talking bank robbery.”

“Heck yeah!” Todd said immediately. “This’ll be a cinch! All you gotta do is give the place a good shakedown while Freddikins breaks down the door – “

“NO,” Lance said hurriedly. “If people see signs of quakes and broken-down doors, they’re gonna know it was us. Everyone knows where to find us. If alarms go off, we could find ourselves dealing with cops, the X-Men, or both. We screw this up, we end up in jail and Pietro REALLY ends up alone. That’s why Wanda is our best play.”

“You think I can get in and out quietly using my powers,” Wanda said calmly.

“I sure do,” Lance confirmed.

Wanda had her doubts. Not about the morality of bank robbery; if she had qualms about theft, she wouldn’t have stayed with the Brotherhood as long as she did, and she was desperate to get through Pietro’s hospitalization with as few complications as possible. What worried her was finesse. She hadn’t let her powers get out of control in long enough that she knew everyone else had faith in her, but given such a delicate mission as this, she wasn’t all too sure she wouldn’t mess it up in the clutch by going overboard by accident. All the same, she knew there was no other choice. “All right,” she said, “I’ll do it. On one condition.”

“And that is?” Lance asked.

“When all this is over,” she demanded, “I get my own milk for the fridge.”

* * *

 

The Jeep parked in the shadows with no headlights on, its three occupants – Lance, Todd, Fred – silent as the grave, able to hear their own heartbeats. It all rested on Wanda now. How long had she been gone? Was it too long?

When a silhouette approached the car carrying a full bag, the trio bristled, wondering for a moment if it were some law-enforcer trying to bait them. However, as she neared, she was easily identifiable as Wanda, who was just as relieved to see the car as the others were to see her.

She climbed into the front passenger seat, silently handing the bag back to Todd and Fred while Lance started the car up and took it out of the vicinity, slowly at first, but faster once they’d gotten down the block.

It finally felt safe to talk. “I got more than enough,” Wanda stated, feeling relief wash over her as the bank was left behind. She wouldn’t call the feeling anything akin to the rush Lance got from breaking the rules; he felt actual joy in the process while she simply felt a cessation of anxiety. “We can put a little extra toward our grocery bill.”

“Or somethin’ more fun,” Todd suggested.

“Or our grocery bill,” Wanda insisted.

“Or something more fun,” Fred argued.

“We need food,” Wanda said firmly.

“And we need to have fun,” Lance contributed.

Aware this conversation was going nowhere, Wanda went on, “I was able to disable security before anything went off. They shouldn’t know anything happened until tomorrow morning.”

“And all that’s left to do is put the money through the laundry,” Lance proclaimed.

“How’s runin’ it in the washer gonna help us any?” Todd asked.

“It’s an expression,” Lance sighed. “We’re going to cash it in for orders so we’re not handing huge piles of cash over. You’ve seriously never heard anyone use the words ‘money laundering’?”

“Gimme a break,” Todd groaned. “I ain’t a dictionary.”

“Well, I think this calls for a little celebration,” Lance decided, flipping on the car radio.

“What is this?” Fred asked in disgust as the song poured forth. “Eighties trash?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s seventies trash,” Lance corrected. “And I’m not changing it.”

“You’re turning it off,” Wanda informed him as she withdrew her ringing phone. There was only one place a call could be coming from at this hour, and knowing this full well, Lance shut the radio off, his heart skipping a beat.

“Hello,” Wanda said into the phone, her tone formal. “This is…Yes…That’s good to hear…we’ll be there as soon as we can…thank you.”

The others already knew the result from Wanda’s phrasing. It still cleared the air up by a good bit when she hung up the phone and said, voice breaking, “He’s awake.”

* * *

 

When they re-entered his hospital room, Pietro was lying back on his pillow, staring up at the ceiling, and muttering the words “This is so boring.” As soon as he was aware of his visitors, he sat up quickly, snapping, “Where were you this whole time? I was bored out of my skull!”

“Well, excuse me!” Lance shot back. “We were out helping you!”

“Helping me HOW?”

“In a way we CAN’T DISCUSS HERE,” Lance said through gritted teeth; Pietro got the message.

He was back to normal, as lively as ever, the poison purged from his veins, and Lance wanted to just fall atop him and hold him close enough that they could never be separated again. Instead, he quipped, “You scared us, you know. Don’t do that next time!”

“Like it’s my fault I got poisoned!” Pietro argued.

“For the record, I knew you’d pull through the whole time,” Todd said casually. “The others were freakin’ out, but I got ‘em to stop panicking.”

“Why don’t I believe that?” Pietro asked, one brow raised.

“Because it’s not what happened,” Wanda said flatly. “We’re glad you’re okay, though.”

“Never better,” Pietro affirmed, his teeth actually gleaming as he smiled beneath the hospital fluorescents.

“Now things can finally get back to normal,” Fred remarked.

Lance stepped close enough to Pietro to clasp his hand once more, roughly, tightly. “Let’s go home,” he suggested.

* * *

 

Wanda was once again relegated to the back seat as Pietro took his place in the front. At first, there was silence on the ride’s initial stretch. Then Pietro ventured to say, “They told me all four of you brought me in.”

“Yeah?” Lance said. “What about it?”

“I’m only gonna say this once,” Pietro insisted. “And I’m not ever gonna say it again. So you better pay attention and remember this.”

“Okay,” Lance agreed. “We’re listening.”

“You guys seriously are my family,” Pietro admitted. “I’m glad I’ve got you.”

Silence reigned yet again until Todd remarked, “GEEZ, you’re sappy.”

“Totally sappy,” Fred agreed.

“Are you expecting a group hug or something now?” Lance chimed in.

“Stop making fun of him,” Wanda stated. “It’s a big step to admit you’re capable of human emotions.”

“Did you just try to BURN me, Wanda?” Pietro asked in astonishment.

Lance pulled the car over as they neared the grocery store. “Gotta make one stop,” he proclaimed.

“Why?” Pietro huffed.

“Because we need to pick up more milk,” Lance answered.

* * *

 

The hour was more than late by the time the Jeep pulled into the boarding house driveway. Its five occupants stumbled into the house exhausted, Wanda taking just enough time to scrawl her name on her milk jug in permanent black marker and store it in the fridge beside the communal one before heading up to bed. Fred and Todd followed close behind; they paused to have a quiet discussion at the top of the stairs before entering Fred’s room together. Pietro and Lance were the next to reach the upper level.

“I smell like hospital,” Pietro observed. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

As he turned to make for the bathroom, Lance set a gentle hand on his shoulder to pull him back. “What?” Pietro asked as he faced Lance once more.

“I really am glad you’re okay,” Lance said softly before stepping into the closest proximity.

Pietro knew what he wanted, and came the other half of the distance himself for them to share a long kiss, one that spoke of reunion despite only having been separated for a few hours.

Pietro, having ever the high opinion of himself, knew his scare must have thrown the others into disarray. He’d been knocked unconscious too soon to have any time to be worried for himself. Thinking about what Lance must have felt watching him collapse, however, gave him a shiver. He was glad to be alive for his own sake, yes. And glad to have delivered on pulling through.

His fingers briefly interlaced with Lance’s; then, in less time than it took for his heart to beat once, he’d pulled away to dash into the bathroom, and the sound of cascading water pattered from behind the door.


	6. A Silver Lining

The breakfast table was alive with conversation as Wanda opened the fridge to retrieve the milk. Her hand hovered over the jug, then stopped. As the implications of what she was looking at sank in, frustration bubbled up within her.

Both jugs of milk now had the word “Wanda” written on them, making them indistinguishable.

“PIETRO!” Wanda screamed. “Which one of these is mine?”

“The one with your name on it,” Pietro answered, biting back a laugh.

Wanda was about ready to send Pietro back to the emergency room with a brand-new injury when she caught sight of the rest of the kitchen. The dirty dish pile was gone. Someone had probably stuffed the dishes into the cabinets so they wouldn’t have to be done, but a cursory check revealed the cabinets well-stocked with dishes that didn’t seem to have a spot on them.

“Who did the dishes?” Wanda asked in legitimate confusion as she returned to the breakfast table, ready to just eat dry cereal.

“The rest of you jerks were too lazy to,” Pietro replied. “It took me less than five minutes anyway.”

It was generally understood that this was the closest they were going to get to a “thank you” for having seen Pietro through the night and collected the funds to pay for his treatment.

“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Pietro went on as Wanda took her seat, completing the set of all five present. “We’ve all had a rough couple of days. You almost lost your peerless leader. I say we take tonight to celebrate. There’s a club on the wrong side of town that’s about our speed. Pretty strict entry requirements, but we can just have Blob bounce the bouncer if they give us trouble. From there, we dance the night away. Trust me, it’s our sound.”

“I’m in,” Lance said immediately.

“Sounds like a good time,” Todd agreed.

“Sign me up!” Fred declared.

Wanda was silent for a moment before saying, “I don’t dance.”

“Yeah, well, you need to lighten up,” Pietro told her. “You still don’t smile enough.”

“I’ll go,” Wanda relented, “but only because I know I’ll be physically dragged there even if I say no.”

“Dress code?” Lance asked.

“Tough guy casual,” Pietro answered. “Emphasis on the color black.”

“Works for me,” Lance declared. “And until then?”  
“I dunno, we do whatever we want,” Pietro stated. “Like we always do.”

That seemed to be an agreeable course of action.

* * *

 

They strode onto the dance floor with confidence and grace, all decked out in black ensembles of various quality. Lance in particular, bearing a midnight-shade tee over incredibly ripped jeans, was glad to not only appreciate the way he looked but also feel as though he belonged at the current venue.

The music that thrummed from the speakers distributed throughout the club blared squealing guitars and harsh vocals. Pietro had been right; this was the sound the Brotherhood was looking for. Strobe lights and spots of color illuminated the floor filled with dancers outfitted in leather, spikes, and torn fabric.

Pietro, Lance, Todd, Fred, and Wanda staked out their claim in the very center of the room before the former four broke out into movement to the heavy beat. Wanda tapped a toe and bobbed her head for a few measures before retreating back into the crowd, eventually coming to rest at the wall. This was the sort of place where people needed to be careful; there was more than dancing going down on this floor. There were drug deals being bartered, and exchanges of other seedy services. Wanda, however, did not feel threatened. If she hadn’t been sure she could defend herself from trouble before, her flawless execution of the bank robbery the previous night had sure hammered home that she could do what she wanted.

(As for the robbery itself, it had been discovered that morning, but no one had even a clue as to suspects. The X-Men had discussed it, and Rogue had accused the Brotherhood, but Kitty had argued that as bad as Lance was, he wouldn’t steal THAT much, and Kurt expressed doubt that they could even get into the facility without making an obvious mess, so the actual culprits were ruled out immediately and never discovered.)

Wanda watched her four companions groove to the music for some time. They all did look quite satisfied. Her gaze wandered, and eventually alit on a point further down the wall. A sight surprised her. She wasn’t the only one avoiding the crowd. There was a boy. He looked to be about her age – a surprise, since she hadn’t expected to see any other teens around this environment. The Brotherhood had only gained access by giving security a taste of what would happen if they were denied; the dancers had momentarily felt the quake but dismissed it as thrumming from the speakers.

The strange boy was rather alluring. His shirt’s long sleeves weren’t enough to hide his well-muscled arms. He was tall, trending toward slender but in a way that encompassed a solid body. His hair was golden brown, only long enough to curl around his ears and tickle the back of his neck. What really spoke to Wanda, however, was the way he regarded the rest of the club. The expression upon his face was that of a bird-watcher noting the arrival of a chickadee on a bare branch. The dancers seemed to fascinate him, even as he was having no part of their frolicking. While Wanda knew it was a mistake to assume anyone in this room was innocent, this boy sure gave off that impression. She found herself watching him watch the crowd, debating whether initiating conversation with him was an intelligent course of action. He hadn’t noticed her at all.

“Hey, check it out!” Fred suddenly said, pointing. “Wanda’s found a guy!”

“What, seriously?” Pietro halted his dance to confirm this visually. “So she did.”

“Think she’s gonna ask him to dance?” Lance wondered out loud.

After some time, Pietro answered, “Nah, apparently she’s just gonna stare at him all night while he misses the point.” He shrugged. “Not our problem.”

“Geez, you all gotta leave everything to the Toad, don’t ya?” Todd groaned as he made a leap toward Wanda.

“Okay, WHAT is he doing?” Lance said in confusion.

Still Wanda wondered. What was someone who looked so curious, so inquisitive, doing in a place like this? He wasn’t even dressed in black. His clothing was dark green, shot through with yellow stripes that seemed to shimmer beneath the strobes.

“Someone’s thirsty for a tall drink of water.”

Wanda flinched at hearing the all-too-familiar voice of her annoyance come from her other side. She rounded on Todd, saying in a warning tone, “You were DONE with this.”

“I ain’t after you!” Todd replied, leaning against the wall on one bent arm. “Ego much? I just wanted to make sure THAT was the one you were lookin’ at.”

“What does it matter to you?” Wanda snapped.

“Simple yes or no question.”

“Yes,” Wanda insisted. “I was looking at him.”

“He turns out to be trouble,” Todd said cryptically, “you just say the word and he gets his neck broken.” With that, he launched off the wall in order to approach the mysterious boy.

Wanda’s utter bafflement grew as Todd landed on all fours before the boy before straightening up and saying, “You’re some wallflower.”

The boy flinched, not having expected to be addressed by anyone. “I don’t really dance,” he said in surprise.

“What a coincidence!” Todd told him. “I happen to know a girl who don’t dance either! She’s right over there.” He pointed toward Wanda. “Friend of mine. Pretty good catch, if you ask me.”

“Are you…” The boy blinked. “Is this…being set up?”

“Set up?” Todd repeated. “Nah, I’m just pointin’ out some obvious parallels. You like leanin’ on the wall. She likes leanin’ on the wall. See there? Somethin’ in common. Only seems sensible you should lean on the wall a bit closer together, if ya catch my drift.”

“I would like to make conversation with a person,” the boy stated. “I will follow your direction.”

As he approached Wanda, Todd gave her an obvious wink from behind the boy’s back. Wanda shot him back a smile. So it was possible for them to simply be friends after all.

As Todd returned to Lance, Pietro, and Fred, he found the former two stunned. “You just set Wanda up with someone else,” Lance said in disbelief.

“Well, yeah,” Fred asserted, “because he’s with me now!”

“I got way better than her,” Todd said with a shrug. “’Sides, now she owes me one. Though, uh, I might need help breakin’ a neck if that guy’s tougher than he looks.”

“Hello,” the mysterious boy said as he came to a halt before Wanda.

“Hi,” Wanda replied.

“I was informed you do not like to dance,” the boy said.

“Not usually,” Wanda told him.

“I wish I could,” he went on, “but I do not believe I am ready. I will talk to you instead.”

She noticed, now, that under the glow of the strobes, his skin took on almost a pink tint.

“What are you even doing here?” Wanda asked. “If you don’t like to dance.”

“I came here to…” He chose his words carefully. “Get away from my boss for a while.”

“Tough job?”

“Yes. Very.”

“What do you do?”

“It is complicated,” the boy said in an unsure tone.

“It’s okay,” Wanda replied, reading it perfectly. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Why are you here if you do not like to dance?” the boy asked.

“My friends dragged me along,” Wanda answered.

“Are they good friends?” the boy asked.

“That really depends on your definition of ‘good,’” Wanda told him.

“I wasn’t aware there were multiple definitions,” he said in legitimate confusion.

Meanwhile, out on the floor, Lance and Pietro stayed close to each other as they danced. “I should’ve remembered you were a good dancer,” Lance laughed.

“How could you FORGET?” Pietro retorted.

“I still remember thinking you were all talk back when you said you could keep up with four dates,” Lance recalled.

“What,” Pietro replied, “you don’t think I can keep up with four dates?”

“Now that you put that back on the table,” Lance admitted, “it is pretty hard to believe.”

“I can prove it to you,” Pietro said. “Right now.”

“And how are you gonna do that?”

“By lining up four dates,” Pietro explained. “Yo, Toad! Blob! Change of plan!”

The addressed halted their dance to pay attention to Pietro. Speeding around the immediate area, Pietro dragged Lance and Todd – he knew he couldn’t actually move Fred anywhere – to stand so that they made a line of three. “That’s three out of four,” Pietro remarked. “Now, you three stand there and don’t move while I get…”

Wanda decided she liked the mysterious boy. He really did seem to be as innocent as he looked. His mannerisms and speech were gentle. That only made his presence here all the more inexplicable.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Wanda,” she answered. “What’s yours?”

He hesitated. “I do not know if I should share it,” he said at last.

That was a little odd, raising suspicion. But as Wanda’s face reflected this, he obviously read it from her. “I think I can tell you,” he decided, “but it will sound a little odd.”

“I might like odd,” Wanda urged.

The boy responded, “My name is Vi – “

That was when Pietro sped right up to Wanda, seized her arm, yelled, “BORROWING HER!”, and dragged her out onto the dance floor.

“PIETRO!” Wanda growled. “I was actually having a good time!”

“Yeah, well, I need to prove a point,” Pietro told her. “You can go back to chatting up your hottie after this.”

Wanda shot a desperate look back to the boy, who regarded her with a smile that suggested admiration. He did not follow her to the floor. She wondered what his name really was; she hadn’t caught it all. Probably “Victor” or “Vincent.” She would know once she got more time to speak to him.

Pietro steered her to Lance’s far side, completing the line. “What are you DOING?” Wanda growled.

“Lance doesn’t think I can keep up with four dates,” Pietro explained. “I’m proving him wrong right now. All I need now is…wait for it…”

He tapped his foot impatiently to the fading-out beat of the current song, ready to burst out of the gate once he had his cue. The next song started up with a strong riff, and on its first beat, Pietro began.

He placed his hands on Wanda’s waist, lifted her up, spun her in a circle, and put her back down. Then he was at Lance, dipping the taller boy low to the ground before snapping him back up to full height. Then Todd found himself being twirled by Pietro. Then Fred’s hands were in Pietro’s as the two spun a circle around that fulcrum point. Then Pietro was back to Wanda, starting from the top.

He had hardly left off the last move he made with any particular partner than he’d come back, leaving the four with very little time to miss him. He kept track of the exact type of dance he was doing with each, playing off the last move he’d made with them expertly without mixing any up. He was killing it, and he was well aware of this fact, beyond smug as he kept all four of his friends dancing. They were well aware of how much this was inflating his ego, but no one minded; this was nothing short of fun.

After Pietro had managed to keep up having four dance partners for a full song, he simply tried to continue the pattern, but Lance had miraculously timed it right to grab onto his upper arm and not let go, holding him back from just skipping to Todd again. And since it was Lance, Pietro decided to let himself be slowed down. “Not so fast,” Lance said mischievously. “Maybe I want you all to myself for a while.”

“Maybe I’ll let you have me,” Pietro replied, pressing closer to Lance to continue their dance.

When it became clear Pietro was eschewing three of his partners in favor of the most important one, Todd took up his cue, giving Fred a playful bow; “May I have this dance, baby cakes?”

“I’m gonna sweep you off your feet,” Fred replied, and they both knew he meant it quite literally.

Now Lance and Pietro were paired off, as well as Todd and Fred; Wanda’s eyes searched the wall she’d chosen as home base, but Victor or Vincent or something else that started with those letters, the mysterious boy who’d nearly looked pink under the strobe lights, was now completely gone. Oh well. It wasn’t as though he and Wanda had known each other very long at all. Ships in the night. Still Wanda wondered if she might see him again someday if the circumstances were right.

Currently, she had no conversation partner and no dance partner. She had been more in the market for the former than the latter, but after having been whirled about by Pietro, she found herself actually enjoying the dance. So now, left to her own devices, she began to move all by herself, playing to no one, waving her arms as her feet stepped lightly and quickly. Perhaps it was never that she hadn’t liked to dance, but that she had never felt free enough to do so.

They lost track of how long they spent dancing. Too long. All of them except Pietro ended up completely winded and dripping sweat. And it took all of them to convince Pietro that it was finally time to go home.

On the ride back, Pietro flipped on the radio, settling it on an oldies station and cranking the volume up high enough to be heard from several blocks away. “Keep the party going,” he said, satisfied.

“Oh no!” Lance argued. “Not this time!” He quickly switched the station to something more modern, more hardcore. “You got to listen to that enough!”

“It’s classic for a REASON.” Pietro switched it back.

“They stopped MAKING it that way for a reason!” Lance returned it to his station of choice.

“Can I at least make a suggestion?” Fred asked.

“Nnnnope,” Pietro said as he turned the dial back his way.

Without warning, a green tongue slipped between both Lance and Pietro and knocked the dial to an indie station blaring heavy electronic beats.

“NO,” Lance, Pietro, and Wanda all yelled.

They fought over the radio station all the way home.

And everything was as it should be.

 

~END~


End file.
